


And I dreamt of living

by Ghelik



Series: The 100 Fics [84]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Post-Season/Series 04, Praimfaya | Radiation Wave, Slow Burn, What-If
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:14:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 24,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25199845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghelik/pseuds/Ghelik
Summary: Bellamy sees the rocket ship launch without him. Perched at the top of the communications-tower, he knows it's too late.What if it was Bellamy the one to stay behind in s4 instead of Clarke?
Relationships: Bellamy Blake & Madi, Bellamy Blake/Echo, Echo & Madi (The 100)
Series: The 100 Fics [84]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/543928
Comments: 32
Kudos: 80





	1. Praimfaya

**Author's Note:**

> It's mostly cannon complacent, except for a few minor changes, to make it possible for Bellamy to survive.  
> Contains some radiation sickness and near-starvation.   
> I have absolutely no medical background and the science in this is probably very sketchy. Definitely contains more fantasy than science in that regard.

Bellamy stumbles towards the bunker, choking on blood, his blistering skin on fire. His heart hammers wildly against his ribs; pure, irrational survival instinct urges him to run faster. The death wave nips at his heels. If he were thinking rationally, he would submit to his fate. The spaceship has already left, there aren’t enough supplies left for him to survive five years in Becca’s lab, he isn’t quick or strong enough to reach it in time. Still, he runs as fast as he can, instincts refusing to surrender.

The body, squirming on the ground, catches his eye. He can’t see their face through the blood-splattered glass of their mask, the bulky hazmat-suit hiding their form.

Bellamy doesn’t stop, doesn’t ask what they’re doing here when they were supposed to be halfway to the Ring by now. He just grabs the back of their suit and hauls them back inside.

They crash through the doors a heartbeat before the death wave crashes against the building, shaking it to its foundations.

Bellamy tears his ruined helmet off his head, heaving black blood onto the clean linoleum floors of Becca’s lab. Beside him, whoever stayed behind is entirely still. His hands shake as he pulls their helmet off, vision swimming. He catches a glimpse of forest brown hair before he loses consciousness, collapsing on the cold white floor.


	2. 6 days after Praimfaya (a. P.)

Of all the people in the world to be trapped in a bunker with, he gets a dying Echo.

Bellamy stops in the doorway, body shaking and vision swimming. He leans on the doorframe, trying to catch his breath. The world is fuzzy around him, with darkness looming on the edges of his vision, growing heavier with each passing second. When he drops his eyes, the hands he sees holding the slippery blood bag look like they belong to someone else.

Bellamy swallows, the mechanical gesture reminding him just how thirsty he is.

Echo coughs, a horrible sound that echoes in the chafing silence. She is dying, and he knows it. 

_Move!_ , snaps a slimy, growly voice in the back of his head.

Putting a foot in front of the other takes all of his willpower.

The grounder spy twists, and heaves on the bed. Her body is covered in angry dark-red ulcers, sweat has drenched yet another set of bedsheets. Her hair has fallen off in clumps, and her gums are bloody.

Bellamy knows he should end her misery, has stood over her and contemplated slipping a knife into her throat, as Clarke did for Atom. A mercy kill.

_What is one more death on your hands?_

He has no love for the Azgeda woman. She betrayed him, has hunted down his sister, tried to kill Octavia, put him in chains. _  
_

_Is that why you keep her alive?_ purrs the voice in the back of his head. _Revenge?_

Echo is awake today, her bloodshot eyes tracking his movements warily as he raises shaky hands to the IV pole to replace the empty blood bag.

It would be a mercy to inject a sedative into the IV line.

 _I know why you don't do it_ , says the monster, slithering in the darkness in the corner of his eye.

He watches black blood roll down the plastic tube and into the crook of her arm, perfectly aware that he can't go in like this, can't give her much more of his blood or he will die. Still without another treatment, without knowing how to extract his own bone marrow, this is the only treatment they have.

_You'd rather die trying to safe your enemy?_

Echo's still watching him with her hazy eyes, breath heavy. She looks small and helpless and hurt.

Bellamy collapses on the chair beside her bed, his knees giving up from under him.

"We are living on borrowed time," Jasper's words send shivers down his spine as they tumble from Bellamy's lips. Young, bright Jasper was so tired of fighting, so broken by all the loss.

_Do you think she will make up for not saving Jasper's life? Do you think you can clean that blood with Azgeda blood?_

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees his mom, arms crossed over her emaciated frame, disappointment and disgust etched in every line on her face.

Bellamy's eyes sting, too dry to muster up enough moisture for a single, shameful tear. When he closes his eyes, he sees Jasper as he was that night in the woods: unbothered, light and painfully alive.

 _I am trying to help you_ , the lanky boy said, that day in the eerily silent forest. Bellamy had been too worried about impending black rain, drowning in guilt, hopeless and tired, Jasper, on the other hand…

_What is the point in beating yourself up over all of the crappy things you've done? You did them! And don't say you had reasons, because at the end of the day, at the end of the world, nobody gives a damn about your reasons, because they are your reasons. No matter how much you punish yourself, it's not gonna change anything. It's not gonna bring anyone back._

Bellamy can't bear to look at even the memory of Jasper.

After all, what is he now that he has no Octavia to protect? What is he if not a mass-murderer drowning in the blood he has spiled? What is he if not a collection of his failures?

Echo's eyes fall shut, her head turned towards him.

They are both on borrowed time, two people who should have already died, many times over. Maybe they are already dead, and their bodies haven't gotten the memo yet.

He should put her out of her misery, but… can't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading and commenting


	3. 13 days a. P.

The bone marrow seems to be working.

Bellamy isn't even sure if he did the procedure right. The disembodied voice of Becca's computer and the surveillance videos walked him through most of the process.

 _Raven would have done it better_ , huffs the ever-present voice in the back of his head.

He tries to ignore it as he checks on the spy's ulcers. She looks healthier, and the knot in his stomach loosens a little.

_Clarke would know if she's healing properly._

The chair beside Echo's sickbed is comfortable as he slumps into it, picks up the book he left on the bedside table. Becca's lab is vast; it has a small kitchen, a pantry stacked with unopened boxes of stale rations, two bedrooms, and a big library full of pre-bombs books. The tome he found is a collection of fairytales. Bellamy knew them by heart, once. He would curl beside Octavia on his small cot and tell them until she fell asleep. Now, opening the book, breathing the sweet scent of yellowed paper, tracing the familiar shapes of words, he feels somewhat grounded. The crack of his voice in the asphyxiating silence keeps the monster and darkness at bay.

"When they arrived in the middle of the woods, the father said, "You children gather some wood, and I will make a fire so you won't freeze."

Hansel and Gretel gathered together some twigs, a pile as high as a small mountain. The twigs were set afire, and when the flames were burning well, the woman said, "Lie down by the fire and rest. We will go into the woods to cut wood. When we are finished, we will come back and get you." Hansel and Gretel sat by the fire. When midday came, each one ate his little piece of bread. Because they could hear the blows of an ax, they thought that the father was nearby. However, it was not an ax. It was a branch that he had tied to a dead tree and that the wind was beating back and forth. After they had sat there a long time, their eyes grew weary and closed, and they fell sound sleep."

On the bed, Echo shifts. She is watching him, her honey-colored eyes still blood-shot, but clearer than they have been in weeks.

Bellamy feels like a mouse caught in the stare of a dangerous viper, like a child hiding behind his mother's legs, his fingers tighten around the hard edges of the book. His heart pounds harshly against his ribs as he continues to read. His voice is unbearably loud in the judgemental silence.

"Now, all their cares were at an end, and they lived happily together."

" _Ai nou dig in disha sontaim,_ " Echo says, her voice small and shaky. The unfamiliar words scrape against the silence, making him look up from the worn page.

The spy has turned her bald head away, curled into herself like Octavia used to do when she was frightened her emaciated body looks so small. Under the thin blanket, her shoulders shake slightly.

"I can leave if you if you want."

She curls into a tighter ball. " _Nou ban ai soulou._ " That, he understands. Bellamy settles back into the uncomfortable chair and turns the page. "Shall we try another tale?"

Without turning, or peeking from under the blanket, he sees her nod her head. " _Ait._ "

He is halfway through the second story before he realizes Echo has been coherent for the first time since Praimfaya.

***

Echo is awake, watching him warily.

"This is ridiculous," she huffs after a moment, pushing herself up on shaky arms. Most of her muscle mass has dwindled, leaving only a shadow of her formidable self prostrated in bed.

"You need to rest," he says.

"I am fine," she pants with the effort of sitting upright. "I am not an invalid to be nursed at."

"Of course not," he drawls, watching her slump back onto the pillows, her eyes already on the verge of falling shut.

"I am an Az warrior," Echo slurs, her accent so heavy he nearly doesn't understand the word. "I won't be treated like a child." She sounds like Octavia did, back on the Ark, and his heart twists painfully. He bites back a sob; he misses her so much.

_Pathetic_ , chastises the voice.

***

Bellamy wakes with a start, a kink in his neck, and the book crumpled at his feet. He is as exhausted as he was when he first closed his eyes, his muscles sore and mouth dry.

Beside him, Echo is sitting up, her pillows awkwardly piled up against the headboard to support her slumped form. She is singing under her breath as she plays with the plastic IV tube connected to the crook of her arm. Her skin is still covered in scabs, but at least she isn't sweating and bleeding anymore.

The low yellow light from the lamp on the nightstand highlights the proud arch of her cheekbones and the curve of her bald head. Thin as a rake and weak as she is after spending so long unmoving in her bed, she looks softer than he's ever seen her. She reminds him of the frightened woman in Mount Weather who stared wide-eyed at the two monsters unlocking her cage.

Something like protectiveness twitches in his chest despite his better judgment.

_That's right_ , sneers the ugly creature coiling around his lungs, _drop your guard. Let's see who dies for your stupidity this time._

Bellamy swallows down the shame. He is too tired for anger.

Hearing Echo hum, low and out-of-key, makes him feel wrong-footed like he is intruding in a private moment of vulnerability, something that underlines the disparity between the woman in the cage and the warrior that looked him in the eye and betrayed him. A ruthless Az warrior doesn't sing.

"What are you doing here, Echo?" His voice startles them both.

The spy turns towards him. Her eyes don't shine fever-bright anymore, but her lips are still chapped, and her skin still pale. She studies his face for a very long time before speaking, her accent not as thick as the last time she spoke:

"You couldn't be dead," she says nonsensically. "I thought of bringing you back before they left. I failed."

Bellamy frowns, the notion is ridiculous.

"And they let you go outside?"

If she told the others, they would have stopped her. Explained that it wasn't safe. If she didn't, they would have gone after her... Well, not Murphy or Emori, probably. They were all about their own survival and cutting their losses. But Monty and Harper wouldn't just let Echo sacrifice herself for nothing. And Clarke...

His mind grinds to a halt.

He has been trying to keep his friends out of his mind, decided not to think about the fact that he won't know if they are safe until they come back in five years. He has been soldiering on, fighting the ( _selfish_ ) sense of abandonment and choking ( _useless_ ) longing.  
Bellamy takes a shuddering breath.

"Clarke, didn't stop you?" The words taste like ash on his tongue. When he closes his eyes, he sees Clarke, shining bright and powerful as the sun, always so sure of herself, standing righteous and making the hard choices. Her brains to his stupid, bleeding heart.

_You have such a big heart, Bellamy. People follow you. You inspire them because of this_. The memory of her small hand against his chest sends warmth through his body. Bellamy knows he wouldn't have let Echo walk out of the lab.

_But the only way to make sure we survive is if you use your head, too._

Clarke was willing to put Emori through the torture of the radiation chamber. If he hadn't come to Becca's lab with Clarke and Roan if he hadn't snatched the black formula out of her hand and injected it in his own arm, would Clarke have gone through with it? Bellamy wants to believe that she wouldn't have. He wants to believe that Clarke would have stopped Echo from launching herself into a stupid suicide mission. But the painful truth is, he can't. Because, on the Ring, Echo would have been superfluous, her talents near useless. A waste of resources on a former enemy with a history of betrayal.

"You shouldn't have done that."

Echo bows her head and shrugs one shoulder.

Heavy, suffocating silence stretches between them.

Why did you do it?, Bellamy wants to ask. Why would you be so careless with your own life? You were safe!

He wants to rage and scream and demand to understand.

~~He wants to fall on his knees and thank her for not leaving him alone.~~

They aren't friends; they don't know each other at all, why would she risk being left behind when she had been fighting so hard to stay alive?

"You have made me a _natblida_ ," she says after a while, her eyes fixed on her lap; she winds and unwinds the thin IV line around her long spidery fingers. The movement is hypnotic.

"It was the only way of saving your life."

Her chuckle is a wet, half-choked sound.

"I guess Praimfaya covers even the sacred in ash."

"Poetic," he deadpans, and her honey eyes flit to his face and away, a self-deprecating half-smile on her lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Echo says:   
> Ai nou dig in disha sontaim - I don't like this story  
> Nou ban ai soulou.- Don't leave me alone.  
> Ait - Alright/Ok.   
> **  
> This thing is not betta'd   
> Thank you so much for reading and commenting


	4. 26 days a. P.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Editing this thing to make the mood consistent throughout the story...

"You are aware that we have a perfectly good washing machine, right?"

Echo looks up from where the basin she is using to wash her pants. With her scared head covered in a short fuzz, her eyes look larger than they should, her plump lips are not as chapped as they were.

"Is there anything better for me to be doing?" she asks, her tone flat and dry.

The spy has been regaining her strength at a steady pace over the past few days. But with the increased energy, she has regained that tight control over herself. When she stands, she does so in a wide stance, her shoulders thrown back. When she walks she does so with her back ram-rod straight, when she talks, she enunciates carefully, eliminating all traces of an accent.

It is unnerving, and Bellamy is trying to give her space, to stay away, but...

But the truth is that Echo is the only other living being inside this pristine bunker, the only one who can chase the darkness away.

"Well," he rubs his hands against his pants.

Bellamy feels like Echo has been actively trying to avoid him, keeping to herself, moving quietly like a shadow through the bunker, excusing herself whenever he seeks her out.

"The library is pretty decent," he says lamely.

From her place on the floor, she stares at him for a long time. Her face gives nothing away, and he hates it. Hates that he never knows what she's thinking; if she's planning on killing him in his sleep; if she wishes she hadn't wasted her chance to go to space.

"I'll take that into consideration," she says finally, which is her way of politely refusing. Echo is annoyingly polite.

 _Leave the poor woman alone_ , snaps the voice in his head, and Bellamy feels a blush of embarrassment creep up the back of his neck. "Suit yourself."

He should turn away, leave her alone like she obviously wants to be. Yet he can't make his feet move from the doorway. Bellamy feels rooted to the spot, his heart hammering angrily against his ribs, sweat beading the line of his hair even though it's almost chilly in here.

A machine clanks loudly in the distance, the sound highlighting how heavy the silence between them is.

He should leave, but this is the only place where there is someone else, and the prospect of being alone has bile rising to the back of his throat.

He misses people: the busy Exchange and the rowdy Dropship, the voices bouncing on the Ark's metal walls, the thundering footsteps of children sprinting down corridors, the crackling of conversations carried through badly-isolated ventilation systems. Until Praimfaya, Bellamy hadn't noticed just how much noise people made, how comforting their presence was. He has never spent so much time on his own, and he detests it.

The silence in Becca's lab is deafening; he can't breathe under its weight.

 _I raised you to be stronger than this_ , snaps a voice that sounds like his mom's in the back of his mind.

"Was there something else?" Echo cocks her head, studying like one would a particularly curious bug.

Help me; he wants to plead. I can't take it anymore.

"No," is what he says instead.

Bellamy flees, back to the library, where he can jump into the rhythm of stories and hide in fictional worlds until the monster tires of him and slides away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading and commenting


	5. 30 days a. P.

Bellamy has taken up the library as his particular sanctuary. The smell of the delicate pre-bombs books lining the walls helps calm his nerves; they give him a sense of purpose.

Back on the Ark, he was a collector of stories. Snippets of conversations he heard at the market became wild intrigues; fairytales he picked up in what little free time he had painted the dull walls of his family's pod with lush colors; the worn pages of his mom's's Greek mythology book made hunger disappear; fables told during the Watering of the Tree ceremony became friends. Bellamy didn't care where they came from; he absorbed them and then brought them home to Octavia. That is an easy enough default to fall back to; it is a good enough purpose to have while stuck in a bunker with too little food and nothing to do. So, he stalks the bookcases and devours every book in good enough condition to be read.

At least when he's immersed in fictional adventures, he gets to escape the monster in the back of his head and the darkness eating the world away. If he is reading, concentrating in picturing the worlds some long-forgotten painted on the pages, he doesn't have to see the twisted bodies strewn over the Mountain's mess hall, hear Monroe choking on poisonous smoke, smell the stench of the blood his hands are drenched in. 

_You were hurting, and you lashed out because that's what you do. There are consequences, Bell. People get hurt. People die - your people._

Octavia was right. They should never have attacked that village. He should have stood up to Pike, carried the blame for Mount Weather alone, instead of letting his former teacher convince him that it lay elsewhere, too.

_There are so many things you should have done... None of the Delinquents would be dead if you protected them._

The sound of paper ripping makes him sick to his stomach. Bellamy curls his shaking hands against his chest, eyes fixed on the torn page. Words broken, letters parted and crumbled like squished flowers, once beautiful and now dead and broken and...

 _All because of you_ , purrs the monster in his ear. _You destroy everything-_

 _"_ Are you alright?"

Echo's soft voice chases the creature away, its coils loosening from around his lungs so suddenly, Bellamy feels dizzy. He takes a gasping breath.

"Echo," he croaks, clears his throat and tries again. "I didn't hear you come in."

The grounder spy stares at him with her unnerving, unreadable honey-colored eyes. "You have been staring at that page for the last half hour," she informs him.

Bellamy blinks down at the book in his lap, at the creased, torn page. He can't remember anything about it, which makes the broken page even worse.

 _You destroyed it, because you didn't understand it_ , chuckles the creature with its many voices. _You will never learn._

"I guess I spaced," Bellamy snaps the tome close and pushes a smile on his face. He hopes it looks more encouraging than it feels. "Finally decided to check out the library?"

Echo takes a long measured step into the room, her presence, like a beacon of light, pushing the creature farther away into the darker corners of his mind. Her long fingers trace the spines with a familiarity that comes as a surprise.

She stops halfway down the wall-to-wall bookcase, pulls a large hard-back from the shelf, and thumbs it open, tracing the lines with her long, spidery fingers.

"I can't read _gonasleng,"_ she admits, her face unreadable. "The alphabet is different," she adds after a few seconds.

Bellamy frowns, unsure of whether she is asking for help or just stating a fact.

"I could teach you if you want," he says slowly.

Her eyes find him before, slightly narrowed. For a moment, something like confusion flits over her face, followed by suspicion and disappearing behind her pleasantly unreadable façade.

"Why?"

 _Because you are a coward unable to face your own fears_ , snickers the monster.

"Is there anything better for me to be doing?"

Echo snorts, a sound as loud as it is brief, her plump lips twisting into a smile with a hint of teeth. Long, rolling steps take her to the chair opposite his, where she folds elegantly and hands him the book.

It's a collection of fairytales, the pages yellowed with time, and the gold on the cover chipped away. Bellamy frowns. It's the same book he read by her bedside while she was sick.

"Not the one with the abandoned children," she says, not quite a command. "I don't want to learn that one."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading and commenting


	6. 40 days a. P.

The chess set in Becca's office is a thing of beauty: dark mahogany board and carefully detailed figurines. Bellamy turns the knight in his hand.

 _The good little knight by his queen's side_ , sneered Raven so many months ago. A jab that hurts more now than it did back then.

Is this all he was? What is he now that both his queens are gone? What is a knight without a people to protect?

"Do you play?" asks Echo, appearing out of nowhere as she is wont to do.

"No, Octavia didn't like chess much. She preferred checkers."

The spy narrows her eyes at him. "You had chess in the sky?"

"Yeah. It's a small enough game to make it up." He remembers the Ark with a mixture of fondness and resentment he can't put into words. "But none of our sets were as beautiful as this one."

Everything on the Ark was repurposed and broken, cobbled together from scraps. He scratched the board at home on the dining table and spent a ridiculous amount of time finding buttons to represent the different pieces. The white queen had a pearl mounted at its center and golden filigree around the edges, Bellamy remembers. He bought that button, especially for it. Mom was furious, and Octavia refused to learn to play the game anyway. Maybe if she had seen something beautiful like this, O would have been more inclined.

"Do you want to play?" asks Echo.

"I don't think I remember how."

"I could teach you if you want."

They aren't friends, just two people trapped inside a bunker together. 

"Why?"

The spy straightens, her expression wiped clean of emotion. "As thanks," she clasps her hands behind her back, "for helping me with my letters."

They sit together at the board.

Echo moves the heavy pieces with elegant precision, each movement calculated and refined, leaving him stumbling behind, trying to predict her strategy.

They don't talk much, but even sitting like this, in companionable silence, is better than being alone. Echo keeps the monsters at bay, chases the clamoring voices in his ear back until they are but a murmur in the back of his mind.

The hum of their growls is a constant reminder of what he has done, a perpetual disappointed stare that burns until he wants nothing but to tear his own skin off.

"I checked our provisions," she says conversationally. "We don't have enough rations to survive for five years."

"I know," Bellamy moves his rook towards her knight.

"Do you plan on starving to death?"

"No. I plan on going to the bunker."

Her slender fingers curl over the pieces. The tendons in her wrist stand out harshly against the taut skin. Emotions flit across her face too quick for him to read them before disappearing behind her neutral smile.

She takes his knight with her bishop, leaving the detailed figure looming over his queen.

"Of course. Your people will be happy to have you back."

Bellamy takes the bishop with the queen without really thinking, his eyes fixed on the small crease between what little is left of Echo's eyebrows.

Their days have settled into a dull, repetitive routine, a neverending dance of playing chess, reading, and eating dwindling rations—interminable days of trying to find something to occupy the time, noise to chase away the silence—unending nights of tossing and turning, of nightmares drenched in blood.

It feels like living in stasis, suspended above reality, waiting until it is safe to go outside until the world has healed enough to be inhabitable again.

The purposelessness of their life in Becca's lab reminds him of the Ark. Bellamy's life was meaningless up there, too. He, like all of his generation, was but a placeholder, a necessary step on the way to the age that would go back to the ground. He was a number leading up to the people that would be important. Ever since he was born, Bellamy had been aware of his utter insignificance. He was okay with it. He wasn't supposed to walk through lush, green forests, to fight wars or hunt his next meal. He was a mark on a population ledger, whose maximum aspiration was becoming a guard to secure better rations for his family and find new stories to entertain his sister.

It shouldn't be hard to go back to that mindset. Bellamy shouldn't have problems remembering his place in the world, but he does. He is restless, feels the walls of the bunker closing in on him, the silence eating away at his sanity.

He was once nothing, utterly aware of the futility of his existence. He wishes he could go back to that state. He never killed anyone back when he was nothing. Only when he tried to change things - let Octavia see the world - did his real self rear its ugly head.

Now, Bellamy knows what he truly is, knows what horrors his agency and freedom bring. And still, selfish and monstrous as he is, he wants it back.

A few months on Earth have ruined him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for reading and commenting


	7. 64 days a. P.

The sun shines brightly when they emerge from Becca's lab. There is not a single cloud in the sky, not a single shadow cast over the vast nothingness that surrounds them.

Beside him, Echo gasps.

Once upon a time, there was a forest, there were trees and grass, the chirping of birds and the cracking of branches, the hum of leaves.

Now there is only a desert of ash extending as far as the eye can see, turning the world that was once green and blue and brown into a harsh gray nightmare.

"It's gone," whispers the grounder at his side, her big honey eyes brimming with tears that refuse to fall.

A part of Bellamy had known, of course, he had. He saw the death wave with his own eyes. He nearly didn't outrun it. But, somehow, seeing the aftermath is worse than anything he had managed to imagine. It is surreal that such a horribly beautiful world, so exuberant and wild could become... this.

How can it be gone? How could it become this muted, asphyxiating gray thing?

He takes a shuddering breath.

This can't be it. There must be life somewhere. Anywhere. Something must have survived.

"Come on," Bellamy rasps, climbing down the dune of ash and dirt.

He pushes the horror away, forces himself to think about their mission because if he allows despair to take root, he won't be able to move, he'll choke, and they have postponed their journey far too long.

The bag at his back containing the last of their rations feels ridiculously light. They have to get to the Second Dawn Bunker before they run out of food.

Their boots sink a few inches into the ash with each step, kicking dust up until they're both covered in a gray, itchy sheen. It feels like walking through a marsh, each step slow and difficult.

Echo marches beside him, quiet as a ghost, her thin, emaciated body ramrod straight, face pale as the sand around them.

Bellamy wants to say something, but he is at a loss, and so the silence of the dead world around them settles on their shoulders, pressing them down, sapping their energy and hope.

The grounder stops suddenly, her eyes scan the unchanging world.

"The river is gone," her voice is soft enough to be mistaken by the sigh of the wind.

He frowns, wants to ask how she knows but bites his tongue instead.

The river is gone, and beyond it, there are only stones and more ash. He remembers this river, remembers feeling overwhelmed by the sheer size of it, feeling nauseous perched on Emori's small boat.

How can it be gone?

Echo bends over and retches.

_You killed her. You failed in delivering the night-blood solution._

He holds her shoulders with shaky hands.

Could it be that the night-blood isn't working? Has she been exposed to enough radiation to die? Do they still have time to go back to the bunker? Why isn't he getting sick?

"Echo?"

She spits. "I am fine," she sobs, cleaning her mouth with the back of her hand. "The rations must have been spoiled."

It is true, there is no blood at her feet, only a half-digested paste that was their meager breakfast. Bellamy rubs circles on her back.

They ate from the same pack, and both of them know the rations weren't spoiled, or he would be sick as well. Still, there is no point in saying it out loud.

"Are you ok?" It is a ridiculous question. Of course, she isn't.

The spy looks up at him.

When they first met, her skin was tanned after a lifetime of running under the sun. Now she's garishly pale. Her eyes dull with heartbreak.

"Yes," she lies, because she will never admit that she is not. Bellamy wants to wrap his arms around her, rub soothing circles on her back lie he did countless times when Octavia was upset. He knows the spy wouldn't appreciate it, so he does the next best thing and offers his canteen.

 _"_ Come on," he says, trying to sound happier than he feels. "With a bit of luck, the rover will still be where we left it."

She follows obediently, mechanically.

The silence of this new desert is worse than the quietness of the bunker. At least Becca's lab had a growling air-filtration system, humming electric lights and the random click and creak of pipes and machines, the hiss of sliding doors, and the occasional beeping alert. Out here, there is nothing. No bird, no insects, no rustling of leaves, bubbling water. Only the crunch of their too-loud footsteps and the sigh of the wind playing with the sand.

"We ate grass, once," Echo says. It's the first time she volunteers any piece of herself, and Bellamy contains his breath, afraid that she will shut up if she notices him listening. "A plague destroyed most of Azgeda's crops, livestock was sickly and died, its meat much too expensive for most to purchase. So we boiled grass and ate it, imagining it was lamb stew, chewing on worms like they were fat chickens." she swallows. The tears gathered in her eyes, still refusing to fall. "However cruel, the Earth Spirits always provided."

Bellamy pushes forward.

The ground has been his home for less than a year, and, for the most part, it was cruel and deadly. Everything his people ever got from it, they had to steal or fight for. Still, seeing Earth barren and scorched like this feels impossibly wrong.

"Octavia was seven when a problem in Agro spoiled half our crops." Bellamy and Echo are not friends, they need each other to survive, that's all. There is no reason to tell her his life story. "For two months, rations were cut, so we ate once a week. The problem was, my mom and I were already sharing our rations with O. She was so thin, you could count her ribs. She was tired, all the time; would barely move most days, we had to coax her to drink and turn on her cot so that she wouldn't blister." The Ark often failed to provide.

Echo doesn't say anything, and Bellamy feels silly, complaining about the past like that. It is in the past, O got better, she grew and became fierce and strong enough to lead the last of humanity.

"You always tell the story of Octavia," the spy says after a while, "never yours."

He snorts at the ridiculous comment. "That is my story." The important parts, at least, he doesn't say, because there is no reason to. Beside him, Echo hums noncommittally.

By some impossible miracle, the rover is -more or less- intact. They have to unearth it from under a small dune of ash, but the wheels haven't melted. The metal looks scorched, and one of the solar panels is cracked, but the others work just fine.

Driving to Polis will be a lot easier than trekking through the desolate landscape of what was once Trikru and Skaikru territory.

Echo regards the rover with a mistrust that is eerily similar to Roan. Still, she climbs in, setting her backpack in the back and unstrapping her sword from her side to rest it across the dashboard.

The spy doesn't need to look at their map to give directions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for sticking around.


	8. 65 days a. P.

Polis is a jumbled mess of stone, ash, and metal. Some buildings have survived, the interiors blackened by the fire, windows melted away, random pieces of the lives that were lost blow in the wind. The tower was the largest building he has ever seen, and it should have been visible from miles away. 

Bellamy should have known; he should have been prepared. But he wasn't.

"No."

The whole structure has collapsed on itself, burying the temple, the bunker door under tons of rubble, a large pile of concrete boulders and twisted metal. Sealing in the rest of humanity and their chances of survival. His sister.

_I hate the hole, Bellamy. It's dark and cold! Please don't let me in here._

Standing in front of what's left of the tower, Bellamy can't breathe. Octavia is in there. She is alone in there, surrounded by concrete walls and darkness, and this can't be happening.

_Please, Bell, you promised._

He launches himself at the debris, pushes boulders and claws at the sand, slithers between concrete slabs deeper and deeper into the bowels of the tower.

The air is heavy with dust that makes him cough, and his eyes tear up, but that is not important. The only thing that matters is Octavia, buried alive under tons of stone. His heart hammers against his ribs, his hands shake. In the darkness, he can't see where he is going only that he needs to dig. He has to. He promised Octavia he wouldn't let anything happen to her. He can't leave her under the floor. Octavia can't stay down there. She deserves better. She deserves to walk under the sun. She deserves to feel its scorching warmth, breathe fresh air. He promised he'd keep her safe. He promised. He needs to get her out. He has to get her out.

Bellamy is vaguely aware of the sound of shifting stones overhead. He thinks he hears someone calling his name. It's not important. The only thing that matters is Octavia and his people trapped under the rubble.

"Octavia!"

Someone pulls him back, a cold hand on the back of his neck. Someone talks, but the words are gibberish under the rush of blood in his ears.

"I need to get to her."

The grip tightens and pulls him back. Bellamy fights it, but it's too strong. There is a panicked edge to his voice when he growls: "Let go of me!"

It doesn't, pulling him out into the sun just as the whole structure collapses with a loud, echoing rumble.

"NO!"

He launches himself back onto the ruins, only for Echo to wrap her frail body around him, pulling him back once more. Her bony arms are like steel bars around his arms, and pure, unadulterated wrath burns through his veins.

"LET GO OF ME, YOU FILTHY GROUNDER!" Bellamy roars, claws and scratches at her bare skin, bucks on the sand, trying to dislodge her. He slams his head back against her face and turns to bite.

The spy is unmovable, her impossible strength keeping him down until he is too exhausted to move. Until the only thing he can do is hang in her arms.

The rush of blood in his ears has disappeared, substituted by a low, regular humming sound. It takes Bellamy a ridiculous amount of time to notice it's Echo, humming soothingly in his ear. He can feel her chest pressed against his back, her arms still tight around his body. Somehow she's trapped both his wrist in her hands.

Echo's hands are bizarre: covered in scratches and cuts from the stone she has tried to shift. There is dirt under her cracked fingernails. One of her nails is missing, torn clean off.

The bloody mess reminds him suddenly of Murphy, curled and shaky in the Dropship. _They have tortured him_.

When did Echo lose her nail?

Bellamy lays limp in her grip.

The rage has burned through him like a wildfire, leaving only an exhausted shell behind. His mind is silent, but for the looping mantra. "I need to open the bunker."

His voice is a croaking pleading thing scraping against his sore throat. "Please, I need to open the bunker."

Echo stops humming, sighs, and squeezes his wrists slightly.

"Look."

Too tired to fight, he drops his eyes to his own ruined hands: his fingers are bloody, shredded, coated in wet dust. He doesn't feel the pain.

"We can't move the whole tower by ourselves," she whispers in his ear. Soft and calm.

"I can't leave my sister down there." Echo can leave if she wants. He can't. He won't. He can't.

"Your sister wouldn't want you to kill yourself trying to accomplish the impossible, Bellamy."

Her words send shivers down his spine.

 _You are dead to me_ , said Octavia not so long ago. Maybe, maybe if he unearths the bunker, she will forgive him for leaving her under the floor.

Echo cards her fingers through his damp curls, her voice barely a whisper against his ear. "Let us find supplies, a place where we can survive. Let us find better equipment. Down there, they don't have night blood; radiation will kill them if we open the bunker now."

Her left hand is still wrapped around his wrist. Bellamy can't take his eyes off it: coated in ash, black blood oozing from small cuts all over her fingers. The sight feels incongruous even if he knows how she got wounds so similar to his.

"We'll come back?" he asks. He feels so small, too exhausted to fight.

"Yes. Yes, we will come back and move every stone in Polis until we get your people back."

Bellamy closes his eyes, bone-tired. The spy continues to hold him. Her arms around him feel more like a hug than a restraint.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading and commenting


	9. 74 days a. P.

At some point, the endless dunes give way to a sea of burnt trees, the blackened bare trunks stand at attention, around them, their long shadows giving some respite from the blinding sun, at least.

They are on the last box of rations; it hasn't rained once since they left Becca's lab, and they are running low on water.

Beside him, Echo dozes, her head resting against the window, her scabbed hands curled around a long beaded necklace in her lap.

His own wounded fingers pulse in sympathy.

Bellamy tightens the grip around the steering wheel.

He won't let her die out here. There must be something alive, a place where they can survive.

The sound of something splashing against the windshield catches him by surprise. A moment later, something impacts against the hood. Bellamy steps on the brake so suddenly, the spy jolts awake.

"What was that?"

"I don't know." The grounder shakes her head, slips her beaded necklace into her pocket, and unlatches the door.

The black trees look tall over them when they step out of the rover. He thinks he hears a low rumbling in the distance, but it might as well be his imagination.

_There is nothing here. You are alone like you deserve._

Echo has unsheathed her sword, watching the trees with narrowed eyes.

Wind whistles between the trees and then dies down, enveloping in eerie silence.

The thing on the windshield is a bug.

Bellamy has no clue what kind, only that it must have been big to splat like that, smearing green-gray goo all over the glass. The whole hood, in fact, is sprinkled with the remnants of fat many-legged insects, their iridescent exoskeletons crushed as they impacted against the vehicle.

His stomach grumbles loudly as he touches one with a finger, wondering if he can risk getting sick from eating it.

Across from him, Echo doesn't hesitate. She scrapes the insects off the hood and shoves them into her mouth, swallowing them as quickly as possible.

Bellamy shudders.

Octavia ate like that: too quick, afraid her food would be taken away.

Thinking of his sister makes him forget just how hungry he is. How can he eat when he isn't sure Octavia is eating enough? When so many of his people don't get to? When...?

"Eat your fill," says Echo between bites. "You need your strength to control your rover."

The insects taste like ash, but once he has taken his first bite, he doesn't care. Bellamy plucks the squashed bugs from the warm hood and swallows them whole. One, sometimes two at a time, he eats until there are no more left until his belly is heavy with the weight of the creatures he has devoured, has killed even without meaning to, just by existing.

The spy smiles at him. Her teeth stained with greenish goo and what looks like a spidery leg. She licks her lips, honey eyes bright with excitement.

"Insects mean life," she says, and her excitement rolls over him like a warm blanket. "If they survived, there must be a safe place out there."

The words sink in slowly. Bellamy feels his heart beating harshly against his ribs. If insects survived, it stands to reason that something else might as well.

"Earth Spirits proved," she says. A laugh bubbles up, exploding irreverently loud in the graveyard of trees. Echo grins, and it is fierce and powerful. She looks unbeatable.

"Come on. You can drive for a while."

Her fierce grin ebbs away, uncertainty flashes for a second on her sharp-edged eyes before she slams the lid on her feelings down.

"I don't know how."

"I'll teach you," he says with a shrug. Echo looks unsettled.

"You would trust me with that knowledge?"

Now it's his turn to feel unsettled. They aren't friends, but are they still enemies? It would actually make sense to leave him behind and search for a place on her own. If she knows how to drive, she can betray him and abandon him.

Yet, if she was planning on leaving him behind... Wouldn't it have been much easier to let the Polis tower crush him?

"Yes, I guess I do trust you."

Echo stares at him, startled; eyes bright with something he doesn't really understand.

"I will try not to drive into any trees."

"You should have seen the first time I drove, Raven nearly tore my head off for scratching it."

They climb back into the vehicle. Echo looks unsettled, but she has squared her shoulders with determination.

"Alright, _seda_. How does this thing work?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trig words:   
> seda - teacher  
> Thank you so much for reading and commenting


	10. 80 days a. P.

Their luck runs out.

The burnt forest leads to a desert of tall dunes and harsh, unpredictable sandstorms that crack one of their solar panels and push the vehicle into a ditch.

Still, they push forward, walking under the charring sun and huddling together during the freezing nights.

"Have you ever spent so much time in the desert?" Asks Bellamy, his voice scrapes its way out of a too-dry throat.

Beside him, Echo shakes her head. "Only _frikdreina_ and madmen braved to the Wastelands." she chuckles, the sound nearly hysteric. "I am trying to figure out which one I am right now."

Wind howls overhead, the sound eerily similar to the voices screaming in the back of his mind. They should have packed a tent when they left the rover. 

"You aren't a mutant." 

"We aren't what we once were."

"Does that make us freaks?" 

Her eyes are vast pools of black in the darkness of the desert. For the longest time she doesn't answer, and then:

"Did your people ever hold something above themselves? Cherrish its sacred nature above all?" 

It is a weird question, one Bellamy never really stopped to think about. He never joined the cult around the Last Tree, never saw much use in any sort of faith, and never understood why anyone devoted so much energy into it. 

"Anything that didn't serve to protect my family was useless to me," he says finally. 

"You can't understand, then."

Bellamy shivers, unsure whether it's for her words or the cold. He can't feel his fingers. 

"Try me." 

They aren't friends, there is no reason for her to explain her weird culture and strange beliefs. But, as long as she is speaking and he is listening, Bellamy knows they aren't dead. 

"Nightblood belongs to the Commander's lineage. I am of no clan, no trade, and no worth. I am tainting it."

"You'd rather be dead?" 

She is silent for a long time like she is seriously considering the question. "No. And that makes it worse."

***

A sandstorm pins them down for a whole day, and when it finally subsides, they are covered in three inches of sand. Water runs out two days after the food does.

"We are going to die here." Bellamy's voice is raspy; it scrapes his raw throat, tumbling off his lips without any grace.

_Do you think you deserve the sweet release of death?_

Echo doesn't answer. The skin of her shoulders is painfully red; her nose has started to peel. Still, she pushes forward, brows knitted in concentration like each step requires all of her willpower.

He stumbles after her. His limbs feel like jelly; the air scorches his throat with every breath.

Maybe they are dead already, and this is their punishment for all the bad they've done. Maybe they didn't outrun the death wave and are trapped in their personal hell. Alone for all eternity, condemned to walk through a dead world, sunburned, parched, and unbearably hungry.

Echo's knees falter, and she collapses like a string-less puppet. Bellamy watches her roll down the dune in slow motion. When she doesn't get up, his heart stops.

Climbing down the dune after her seems to take weeks, years. When he reaches her, her skin is papery thin, dry, and cracked.

"Wake up," he croaks, shaking her shoulder.

Even if this is hell, he'd rather have her by his side than be completely alone, no matter how disgusting that makes him.

"Echo, you need to get up."

He wants to wet her chapped lips, but they don't have any water left. Wants to haul her over his shoulder, but he can barely keep himself upright.

He paws clumsily at her throat, trying to find a pulse.

Everything feels surreal, like he's underwater, watching himself through a foggy glass.

"Wake up. Come on, Echo! Wake up!"

Her pulse flutters softly against the long column of her throat.

"Roan?" she asks.

"Come on, soldier," he sighs. It takes Bellamy a ridiculous amount of time to climb back to his feet. In his shadow, Echo's eyes look dull as they travel over the cloudless sky.

" _Yu ste daun. Ai sin you win up."_

The words sound familiar enough, but he is too tired to decipher them. So, instead, he reaches for her hand and tries to push her up. "You are not dying here."

Echo laughs, soft chuckles wracking her whole body and nearly making him topple. "We are dead already," she says in slurred English. "Look, my king, the vultures, have come for us."

He follows her eyes to the sky, has to blink away the black spots, and squint against the unforgiving sun. Then, he sees it: a black shadow circling overhead. 

"That's a bird," he says intelligently.

Echo has stopped laughing, slumping on the sand instead.

"Tonight, it feasts."

Feast. Food.

It takes Bellamy's sluggish mind an embarrassingly long time to put all the pieces together. If there is a bird, there must be a survivable place nearby. Water. Food.

"Echo." She hums noncommittally. "Echo, we need to follow that bird."

The harshness with which his heart pumps against his chest is nearly painful, but it grounds him.

"Or, we could just accept that the Spirits don't want us and fall into the Void."

Adrenaline shoots through his veins, the sudden surge of energy enough to pull the spy to her feet. Her head lolls to the side, her eyes roll in their sockets like she doesn't have enough strength to keep them open. " _Ai laik noden, teik ai rid op, Roan."_

Bellamy's brain processes the words too slowly. He shakes his head. "We can't sleep just yet," he rasps, every word scrapes his raw throat like sandpaper. "I have a gun. If we get close enough, I can shoot it."  Processing the world around them is difficult as it swims in and out of focus. "We have to climb that dune. Then we feast."

His belly rumbles at the thought of eating. Echo's honey eyes follow the line of the dune. "Is that a command, _ai Haihefa_?"

Bellamy's knees buckle under her weight. He isn't strong enough to drag her up.

The spy nods, her eyes rolling up to look at the bird and then falling shut again. She forces her body upright, pitches forward and stumbles. She lands on her hands and knees on the scorching sand, and she starts to claw her way up. Clumsily and slowly. Bellamy follows as gracelessly. His body weighs him down, slipping down a little with every inch he manages to climb. It takes them days, maybe weeks. The sun beats relentlessly on their backs. It hangs unmoving in the sky, laughing at their blistered, sunburned backs at their desperate attempts to continue fighting.

Halfway up, his adrenaline ebbs away, leaving disoriented and as tired as he was. He considers just letting go, curling up in the sand. It would be so easy to stop fighting.

 _Do you think you deserve the sweet release of death?_ Sneers the voice in the back of his head. _You don't. You don't get to rest, don't get to find peace._

Echo reaches the top first. She sits on the sand with a soft "oh."

"What is it?" pants Bellamy.

The grounder doesn't answer, staring at the distance, her bright-red skin glistening in the sun. "We reached the end of the Void," she says finally. "The lands of our Ancestors lie beyond."

Bellamy frowns at the nonsensical words.

Then, he reaches the top of the dune, and his heart twists painfully in his chest. Too-dry eyes try to conjure enough moisture to make tears.

Paradise lies ahead: green trees extending as far as the eye can see, grass-covered clearings. He can smell the needles and flowers from here, hear the busy hush of the forest. A bird sits on a branch, cleaning black feathers that gleam with the colors of the rainbow.

Bellamy fumbles with the gun. But, when he aims it at the clueless bird, his hands shake too much for a clean shot, his vision swims. Beside him, Echo plucks the gun from his numb hands. "Fly true," she whispers as she pulls the trigger.

The gunshot is deafening. The bird falls off the branch.

Neither of them speaks as they pull the feathers off the corpse and drink its cooling blood, each drop like a blessing. Bellamy isn't used to eating raw meat, but he doesn't care, he guzzles it down, even though he knows he should pace himself, overeating after such a long time is going to make them sick. Neither he nor Echo care. Their bellies are full for the first time in weeks, they are in the cool shade of trees, surrounded by chirping and rustling, the dirt under their faces smells fresh, and when Bellamy closes his eyes, it feels something like home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trig:   
> Yu ste daun. Ai sin you win up. - You are dead. I saw you die.  
> Ai laik noden, teik ai rid op, Roan - I am tired, I want to sleep, Roan.
> 
> Thank you so much for sticking around.


	11. 81 days a. P.

Night has fallen when Echo wakes him. Moonlight highlights her cheekbones and the long line of her nose, silvery wisps of hair crowning the high arch of her head, making her look like a mystical creature.

"Come, I know where we can find water," she says.

Bellamy follows her through the underbrush, tripping on roots and slipping on wet leaves. 

"We are in Shallow Valley," she explains, gliding soundlessly through the woods. In the eerie silver light, she looks like a ghost, and he has the sudden urge to touch her, make sure she is real. When she looks over her shoulder with her big honey eyes, nearly black in the darkness, a horrible thought sends shivers down her spine.

Is this real? Did they make it out of the desert?

 _Do you think you deserve the sweet relief of death?_ Growls the creature in the back of his mind.

Could it be that she died, and he's just conjuring her up to ward off the loneliness?

He grabs her arm and Echo tenses, startled. Bellamy should apologize, should let go, but he can feel her pulse through her skin, feel the warmth radiating out of her.

"How do you know?" he croaks and hopes against hope that she doesn't shake him off.

Slowly she turns to continue, ignoring his vice-grip, all the way the collected, unflappable Azgeda spy. Something in her aloofness is reassuring.

"I've been here before," she says.

"When?"

The spy doesn't answer right away. Contemplating whether to give more information about herself away, reminding him they aren't friends.

"Years before your people fell from the sky. Queen Nia needed some information from Louwoda Klironkru. While I was acquiring it, I found myself in need of a bath." She throws him a smile over her shoulder. In the moonlight, he can't see the scars from the radiation or the sunburns, only the sharp glint of a tooth and the line of her profile.

Against his fingertips, her pulse is strong and quick.

"You look chipper."

"We aren't alone anymore. If Louwoda Kliron survived the death wave, its Kru must be safe as well. Which means we have at least one hundred fifty more hands to help us open that bunker to get your sister out."

Bellamy's heart does a somersault, and he squeezes her wrist in silent acknowledgment.

The silver river glitters in the moonlight, as mysterious and ethereal as the grounder beside him.

They drink greedily until they are satiated, and then they take off their clothes and sink into the cool water with a sigh of relief.

Bellamy feels his muscles unclenching, the water feels like a balm against his sunburnt skin, washing the dust of the desert and the ashes of the world off his body.

He lays on his back and stares at the stars overhead.

One of them might be the Ring, where his friends are safe, eating algae, healing from all the horrors of Earth.

***

Echo guides him to the small village of Louwoda Klironkru by mid-morning, and they make sure to walk unhidden on the overgrown path. The last thing they want is to be seen as a threat; to make an enemy of a much-needed ally.

The village is nothing like Bellamy's ever seen on Earth: small wooden houses decorated with brightly colored garlands, glass chimes fill the air with clear music. From every window hang sheer curtains, the thatched roofs are overgrown with bright green moss, and the streets are full of potted plants. The houses have small fenced-in backyards overrun with greenery, clothes hang from lines and color splatters dot the walls.

They walk past a raised dais with two throne-like chairs covered in breezy, colorful cloth.

Beside him, Echo shivers.

"The wedding must have been something else," she whispers, her voice loud in the eerie silence.

"What do you mean?"

"Those," she makes a vague gesture at the chairs, "are to honor newlyweds.LOuwoda Klironkru would have danced from dusk till dawn and only then gone to bed."

Bellamy's stomach twists.

Shouldn't they have heard a revel like that? Shouldn't someone be up and about by now?

They continue down the street, which is overgrown with grass and weeds.

The air is heavy with a sweet-ish stench, it tickles something in the back of his mind, but he refuses to identify what it is.

"So, they are all asleep?"

Flies hum loudly. One of the doors to the houses is cracked open, the inside dark and quiet.

Echo doesn't answer, her shoulders are tense, but instead of unsheathing her sword, she's clutching her beaded necklace, rolling the painted beads between her fingers.

Dread coils in his belly.

The empty streets lead to an old-fashioned wooden church like the ones in pre-bomb vids. Seeing it now, splattered in faded colors, with chimes hanging from the porch and wild plants growing along the stair-railings to the front door feels surreal.

"That's the gathering hall," explains the spy.

There is a figure huddled by the door.

_Maybe he was too drunk to get home?_

The smell is more intense now, it settles in the back of his throat when Bellamy closes his eyes, he sees the blistered corpses of the people in Mount Weather.

Bellamy pushes that image back and climbs the steps.

The person by the door is a child dressed in a bright red tunic and blue leggings. He's sitting there with his head bowed over his rake-thin chest, brown hair falling over his face.

Bellamy knows he isn't sleeping, but still crouches down beside him, touches his shoulder.

The skin is sickeningly yellow, covered in thin blue and green veins. Under his hand, the shoulder is nothing but bones and squishy, rotten flesh. With the movement, his head rolls to the side, revealing a worm-eaten nightmare.

Bellamy chokes back a cry, his muscles tense, and eyes glued to the corpse.

They should leave. They are not welcome here.

Somewhere, he hears Monroe's panicked screams calling his name.

"We need to go."

Echo doesn't hear him, her fingers are wrapped around the door handle.

They both know what they'll find. They both know what this absolute silence and terrible stench mean.

The spy shoves the door inward.

The poisoned stench of rotting flesh hits them like a mace, so strong it makest their eyes water.

Bright sunlight streams through the beautiful stained-glass windows, bathing the inside of the church in mocking light; it soaks the long tables and the low benches, the dancefloor, and the dry flower bouquets. 

And all over the floor, slumped on the tables, leaning against the walls, embraced and covered in dust lay the corpses of Louwoda Klironkru.

Women, men, and children - a feast for flies and worms.  The stench is nearly as unbearable as the sound of tiny wings whistling in the air.

Bellamy can't take his eyes off the corpses. These innocents, who died during a wedding. In their gathering hall, where they should have been safe.

This is what the Mountain Men looked like after he betrayed them. After he made the only place they could live in, a poisonous hell.

He can't breathe.

No matter where he goes, death follows.

The stench is unbearable. Somewhere, a strange creature is wailing.

Bellamy is rooted to the floor, he can't take his eyes off the gathering hall. These people were innocents, like half the people of Mount Weather. This is what the Mountain Men would've looked like after three months.

The guilt he has been fighting so hard to burry rears its ugly head, slides closer, all sharp teeth and terrible, terrible darkness tearing the edges of his vision.

He can't breathe.

No matter where he goes, death follows.

Something crashes loudly, and Bellamy is suddenly aware that the is standing alone across the court of corpses.

The waling and crashing continue, breaking the spell that kept him rooted to the spot. Bellamy flees.

The sound breaks the spell that kept him rooted to the spot, allowing him to flee.

Echo smashes another of the plant pots. She screams, eyes wild. She claws at her scalp. The sound that comes out of her is heart-wrenching as it echoes in the quiet village. She collapses, the scream continues, hiccups into a sob. Her eyes are full of tears that refuse to fall.

Echo looks at him like he knows how to make this better. Like he knows what to say or what to do. The truth is he doesn't, he's surrounded by darkness, and he should leave before he hurts her, too.

Instead, he presses her firmly against his chest, buries his head in the crook of her neck, and breathes her in. Echo sobs silently against his skin, her hands clawing at his back. Her warm body is the only real thing in the chafing darkness that has devoured him, and he isn't sure he will ever be able to let go. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What is chapter-length consistency? I don't know her


	12. 82 days a. P.

Fire raises high above the roofs of the houses—black smoke curls like a snake up towards the cloudless sky. The smell of burning hair and flesh is even harsher than the stench of rotting flesh. Bellamy has no clue how they'll ever get the smell out of the church.

 _You should leave_.

He stands by the fire, sore and tired. One hundred and sixty-five people died in that church; gods know if there were more, forgotten, devoured by the forest around them. The children were featherlight in his arms as he pulled them one by one out of their gathering hall, and the only thing he can think about is the pyres where they burnt the Mountain Men. Just like in Mount Weather, there are too many corpses to bury.

Echo stands like a ghost beside him, her eyes glassy with unshed tears.

"Did you know any of them?"

They have been standing here for hours, the fire still roars, flames curling up into the sky. Once it dies down, this valley will be covered in ash, too.

The spy opens her mouth to answer, closes it, swallows, tries again.

"Louwoda Klironkru kept to themselves. They were farmers, mostly. What little livestock they kept, it's dead, I checked."

"You know, it's ok to cry, these are your people."

She blinks, takes a deep breath. Air rushes out of her in a woosh.

"These are not my people. They were a means to open the bunker. But they are dead. No use in crying over spilled milk."

Bellamy should be indignant, horrified at her callousness. But he feels nothing. He's too tired, too sore, and heart-broken for anything else. So he stands with Echo by the fire and watches the fire devour the colorful clothes, the rotten skin, and the brittle bones.

For days, Bellamy can't get the stench of rotting flesh out of his skin. He washes his hands raw, and tries to breathe through the tightening coils of guilt, tries to push the memory of too-light bodies, of babies and men and Mountain people and delinquents out of his head.

_Do you think you deserve the sweet relief of death?_

He feels their dead eyes on him, the judgment of the people he has failed and lost, and the strangers that have died when he, who is worth nothing, still lives.


	13. 110 days a. P.

The valley is full of noisy life. The sun shines brightly over the abandoned village, highlighting the pinks and greens of the garlands, glinting off the glass chimes.

Bellamy blinks his eyes open from where he's curled up by the fire. Beside him, Echo lays stock-still, her legs pressed against her chest, hand under the roll she uses as a pillow.

She looks peaceful in her sleep, face smooth, free of worry. She has gained some weight since they reached the valley and the healthy tan she used to have, her hair has started growing again and falls over her forehead in small light brown wisps.

He watches her for a few minutes, his eyes traveling over the proud arch of her cheekbones, the long line of her nose, and plump lips. In the early morning light, Echo looks like a marble statue of a Greek goddess: proud and impossibly powerful. A creature he shouldn't feel safe around but does.

He knows he shouldn't be here. He chose one of the cabins for himself, to give Echo the space they both need. It always feels like a betrayal to his people that he can only sleep by the Azgeda warrior's side and yet he has grown so used to sleeping in the same room as her, he has lost the ability to fall asleep if it isn't with the sound of her.

Bellamy stretches silently and sits up. If he leaves before Echo wakes, the spy won't need to know about this. 

Both of them have settled on a routine that consists of scavenging whatever might be useful from the forgotten remains of the Louwoda Klironkru village, gathering fruit and hunting. Sometimes they spar on a small dirt patch next to the old church. Echo always goes easy on him, and he consistently fails to concentrate, too busy drowning in memories of Harper, Monroe, Miller, and Lincoln to pay attention.

No matter how brightly the sun shines overhead, everything seems dull, shrouded in unpenetrable darkness. Everything he forces himself to swallow tastes like ash, and, sitting beside the grounder, Bellamy feels unbearably alone. He misses Octavia and his friends, finds himself wondering how they are doing. Are the grounders causing problems for his sister? Is Miller happy? Has Murphy managed to drive the others crazy yet? How is Clarke dealing with it all? She must be glad he isn't there to remind her that it's because of him that four hundred of their people died in the death wave.

"How haven't you drowned in your self-loathing yet?" snaps Echo one evening, slamming him back into the present more effectively than any of her physical blows could.

"One of the universe's many mysteries," says Bellamy without any real heat, blocking her left hook.

The woman rolls her eyes, unimpressed. "Your beating yourself up helps nobody."

"I am sorry if my feelings are inconvenient for you. We can't all be unfeeling killing machines."

She flinches, twists into his space, and headbutts him so hard, he hears his nose crunch—her open palm slams into his solar plexus, pushing all the air out of him. Bellamy stumbles back, but the spy doesn't let off, she keeps pushing, her face unreadable, her eyes ice cold. For a second, he wonders if she will kill him.

He stumbles, falls on his ass, and she follows, too quick for him to really process. He should tap out, yield, make her stop, but the raising adrenaline seems to lift the dull veil. He blinks the black blood out of his eyes, and the world is full of bright colors and loud noises, and his heart rushes in his ears.

Bellamy blocks her attack and surges up, pulling at the clear wisps of hair at the nape of her neck.

The grounder bares her teeth, and he whips his free hand up, the palm slams into her windpipe. She gasps for air, and Bellamy shoves her off. 

His body is on fire, humming with the urge to fight. He throws himself into the fray, the whole world reduced to the point of contact of skin on skin, to the burning sting of the punches and the screaming of overexerted muscles. 

Over and over, the spy throws him on his back, and over and over, he bucks and fights and growls like a mad beast, his mind blessedly empty of everything but physical pain. 


	14. 112 days a. P.

“Someone is stealing our supplies.”

Bellamy looks up from the patch of bright pink cloth he is using to mend Echo’s leggings.

“There is nobody there.”

Echo shrugs, “Maybe it’s a wolf or a fox, but something is stealing drying meat and salted fish.”

He bites the inside of his cheek. “We would have heard it if it came during the night.”

“If there are wolves, we should find another sleeping arrangement.”

“Wouldn’t we have seen tracks?”

She levels him with an annoyed stare. “If it’s not a wolf, then it must be something else. Because we had thirteen rabbits and now there are only twelve. And they’ve taken two whole fishes from the barrel.”

“Maybe a bird?”

“The barrel was closed.”

Bellamy’s heart skips a beat, hope blooming in his chest before he can trample it down. Hope is a terrible thing to have. They had hope when they saw Louwoda Kliron, the possibility of not being the only survivors, of not having to spend the next five years alone had been intoxicating. The corpses crushed that hope and nearly shattered them in the process.

Even now, weeks after the fact, Bellamy still finds himself wallowing in guilt and despair. What will happen if they face that disappointment for a third time? If the thief turns out to be a particularly clever fox or an inventory mistake? What if the fish slipped to the bottom of the barrel and the missing rabbit fell off a shelf and is covered in ants in some dark corner of their smoking hut?

The possibility that there is someone else in the valley twists like a dagger in his chest. It is better to believe they are alone.

“We’ll be more careful then. Make sure we lock the doors.”

Echo nods and wanders off; Bellamy lowers his gaze back to his needlework. 

He wishes hope would ebb away, but it doesn’t. Now that the idea has entered his mind, he can’t stop thinking about it. When the hundred first landed on Earth, they didn’t see any grounders for weeks. Perhaps someone is out there, watching them as Trikru did. Maybe they are assessing how trustworthy Bellamy and Echo are. What if there is a whole settlement out there, hiding in the parts of the valley they haven’t mapped out yet.

Bellamy wants it to be true; after all, if birds and fish survived, why not humans?

Someone must be out there. Anyone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading and commenting


	15. 114 days a. P.

They are on the eastern edge of the territory they’ve marked. Bellamy is picking berries, while Echo hunts. From the two of them, the grounder is, unsurprisingly, the better hunter. She can see better at a distance, and her aim is usually impeccable.

So far, they haven’t been able to catch their thief, but Bellamy has found Echo more than once, scanning the distance with knowing eyes.

His basket is half full when he hears the scream: a terrible sound in Echo’s voice that echoes through the forest and sends shivers down Bellamy’s spine. If the spy is screaming, something terrible must have happened. He takes off in the direction of the sound, mindless of how much noise he makes, or how often he trips.

“Echo!”

His mind races, conjuring horrible scenarios where Echo’s body lays limp and covered in black blood, an animal tearing into her insides; of the spy broken, hurt, bleeding. A scuffling sound guides him into a clearing. Echo is on her back, trying to fend off the small, wild-haired creature screeching on top of her.

Bellamy doesn’t even think he throws towards her and shoves the small creature back. It’s a girl, dirty and disheveled child with matted brown hair that reaches to her waist and dresses in tattered green clothes. She watches warily.

“ _Blasted demon from beyond the Void_!” growls Echo in trigedasleng. Her left leg is trapped in a rusty bear trap.

The child bears her teeth, her pale eyes flitting from Echo to him. “Hey, it’s ok.,” he says, keeping his voice soft and even, his movements calm even though the only thing he wants to do is make sure the spy is alright. “Ai laik lookout.” He should have paid more attention to Lincoln’s trig lessons. He should have asked Echo to teach him, but he never bothered, and now, the girl takes a step back, probably not understanding his butchered words. “We won’t hurt you,” he tries. On the ground, Echo snaps something that apparently contradicts that statement. “Where are your parents? Laik weron renon kamp raun?” he tries in trig. The words sound wrong on his lips. Octavia is the one who wanted to learn trig. He was content understanding some of it, helping her learn vocabulary.

 _“Fleimkipa?”_ asks the little girl, her voice rough with disuse.

“No. We are… Skaikru and Azgeda.”

She cocks her head to the side. When Bellamy moves to take a step towards her, she jolts back and flees into the forest.

“The little demon led me straight into a trap,” pants Echo when he kneels beside her to pry the metal open. Black blood gushes onto the dry leaves; her newly mended leggings are soaked through. When he pries the cloth from the wound, his stomach turns: it is deep, the flesh torn into black ribbons. It needs stitches, it needs to be cleaned, and they don’t have any alcohol to disinfect it. Bellamy rips a strip of cloth off his shirt to try and stop the bleeding. They need to get back to camp ASAP. “You are awfully quiet.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“I don’t know,” Echo bites back a scream when Bellamy pulls her up. “Be angry that I ruined all your hard work.”

“I don’t care about the leggings.” He snaps, maybe a little harsher than he should.

_I care about you bleeding out. I care about infection and you dying a horrible death._

She doesn’t answer, and together they hobble back to the village as quickly as possible.

The grounder doesn’t complain as he stitches up her leg. Slumped on a chair, her unfocused eyes follow the movement of the needle, her breathing shallow. Bellamy wishes she would scream, gasp, whimper, curse. Anything would be better than her silence than the quietness of her head falling to the side, and her eyes rolling shut.

“Don’t you dare die,” he growls under his breath, finishing the stitches and wrapping the wound with clean bandages. “If you die, I…”

Bellamy can’t finish that thought, the idea alone selfish enough to make his stomach turn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading


	16. 120 days a. P.

The child is watching him.

Bellamy can feel her eyes on the back of his neck while he collects berries. By now, they are pretty sure that the kid is alone, that she survived because she is a natural _natblida_ , which means she must have spent the past four months alone. She must have seen her village die and probably not understand why she is still alive, what happened to her parents and her friends.

Over the past few days, he has been increasingly aware of the girl’s presence, of her eyes following him, his apparent obliviousness making her bolder every day, coming closer.

Bellamy knows that any sudden movement might spook her. So, he hums while he works and pretends not to notice the eyes following him as he goes to the river to collect water. Before he leaves, he drops a small bundle of cloth containing some dried meat and a change of clothes on one of the stones by the riverbank. Echo was adamant that they shouldn’t feed the _little demon from the Void,_ but he can’t just forget about the girl.

He doesn’t stay to see if she takes his peace-offering, letting her set the pace, giving her space; she needs to feel safe.


	17. 123 days a. P.

The girl becomes bold, following him around like a puppy. Always there but far enough to bolt if he tries to interact with her. At first, she only tags along outside of the deserted town, but soon enough, she follows him all the way to the church’s square. When Echo notices her, she narrows her eyes.

“She lures me into a trap, and you think it’s a good idea to keep her?”

“I consider it a sign that she is a good judge of character.”

Echo laughs, returning her attention to the fish she’s cleaning. Since her leg is hurt, Bellamy has been the one hunting and fishing, making sure the grounder stays off her leg as much as humanly possible.

“Does your pet have a name yet?”

“She is not my pet. And I am not sure she speaks English.”

Her honey eyes flit up to look at the child. “No, she wouldn’t. She is still very young to start learning _gonasleng_ ,” and then she asks in trig: “ _Chit bilaik yu tagon?”_

The girl growls, pointing her knife at the spy.

“Hey! It’s ok. Echo is a friend.”  
“If she slits my throat in my sleep, I will kill you, Bellamy.”

He finds himself smiling at her deadpan tone.

The spy’s sense of humor is as dry as a bone. An elusive little thing that never fails to make Bellamy feel a small measure of pride whenever he manages to make her crack a joke.

They prepare dinner under the girl’s attentive gaze and leave a plate for her on the far end of their table.

“Quit looking at her,” whispers Bellamy. “She will come closer when she feels safe.”

“How do you know?”

“Because she is a scared little girl who has spent the last few months on her own and probably watched her whole village die a horrible death. And because she is a grounder, and, as far as I can tell, grounders have trust issues.”

Echo rolls a cranberry between her fingers, studying him with narrowed eyes.   
“Did you have a child?”

“What?”

“On your Ark, when you lived in the sky, did you have a child?”

“Why would you think that?”

Echo shrugs one shoulder. “You behave as a father would.”

“She is like six,” says Bellamy. “It’s not rocket science.”

“I don’t mean with the child. I mean…” she licks her lips, making a vague gesture Bellamy has started to identify as searching for the right words in _gonasleng_. He really should start learning trigedasleng in earnest. “With your people in general. There is something fatherly about you.”

“I did not have a child on the Ark. But I did raise O. Maybe it’s that.”

“Why did you raise Octavia?” asks Echo with a frown. “Where were your parents?”

_You got mom killed!_

Guilt and shame coil in his stomach, turning the food in his mouth to ash. His heart twists painfully with the memory of his mom’s eyes, wide and panicked an instant before she was sucked out of the airlock.

Across from him, Echo studies him with her curious honey-colored gaze and, in that instant, when she looks so at ease and so confident, he feels a deep well of hatred opening up at his feet. He remembers, suddenly, that Octavia nearly died by her hand. That she killed dozens of innocent people when she blew up the mountain. That she slaughtered people in cold blood, lied, and manipulated her way into a place in his life. Hates that he cares for her, that when he thought that she might die, he was terrified when he should have been glad.

“You’ll excuse me if I don’t want to discuss my family with you.” The words come out like poison, harsh and sharp, and the spy flinches slightly. But she forces a tight smile and inclines her head.

“Please, excuse my words,” she says, her voice flat. “That was out of line.”

As quickly as it came, the anger ebbs away, leaving him cold and wrongfooted. He knows he should apologize but can’t think of the right words. Silence, punctuated by the sound of their eating utensils, unwinds between them like a snake.

At some point, Echo sets down her knife and stands, leaning heavily on her uninjured leg as she gathers her plate and glass.

“I can do the dishes,” says Bellamy, his heart hammering harshly against his ribs _. Please, please don’t hate me_ , is what he wants to say. “You shouldn’t walk on your injured leg.”

Echo’s pleasant smile feels like a slap. “I am not a cripple, Bellamy.”

He watches her limp away and is only partially aware that the girl has snatched her plate from the end of the table and taken it to the edge of the square.

***

Bellamy can’t sleep.

He lays beside Echo by the still-warm ashes of their bonfire and can’t stop thinking about the harsh words he should have bitten back. He shouldn’t have snapped at the grounder the way he did. It’s not like it’s a big secret that he got his mom killed, that he was responsible for Octavia from the moment she was born. Everyone knows it, so why did he react so poorly to her simple question?

“I didn’t have a dad,” he finds himself saying into the night. Beside him, Echo doesn’t move. Maybe she is asleep, and this will all be a waste of time. Bellamy doesn’t dare move to check, for fear of losing his nerve. “Neither did O, my mom never talked about who our fathers were, and I never thought to ask. It didn’t matter. When Octavia was born, my mom put her into my arms and told me it was my job to raise her. And so, I did. My mom she… She wasn’t always _there_. Sometimes we would get weeks without seeing her. She would spend the nights elsewhere, and when she came home, she was angry. She didn’t like Octavia much, and sometimes wouldn’t want to share her rations with O.”

Bellamy swallows.

He remembers making up lies to Octavia as to why mom wasn’t there—telling her stories to make Aurora look better than she was.

“She tried to kill Octavia with a pillow once. O was twelve, and our mother decided…”

He remembers coming home to a thrashing Octavia and a very drunk Aurora, seeing their mother straddling O’s lanky and malnourished body. I was still underage; if I had told someone, they would have put me and O together in the skybox. At least for a couple of months until I came of age.” He takes a shuddering breath. “O would have been safer. But I thought I could keep them both safe if only I spent more time at home. If only I tried harder.”

 _I want to see the Ark, Bell_.

“Why couldn’t Octavia go outside?” Echo’s voice sends shivers down his spine; it’s so soft.

“Because it was illegal for her to be born. The Ark had a strict one-child policy. There were too many people living there. That’s why we had to keep her a secret. When they found out, they killed my mom. They should have floated me, too, but said I couldn’t be held responsible.”

Overhead, the stars blink, like tiny diamonds stuck on a velvety cloak.

“Octavia is fortunate to have such a devoted brother.”

“What about you? Did you have any siblings?”

“Five. They died when I was little.”

“I am so sorry.”

“It’s quite alright. I don’t remember much of my family.”

“Is that why you became a spy?”

“Queen Nia gave me purpose when I had nowhere else to go. I know you can’t see it, but she was… good to me. In her own way.”

A part of Bellamy rejects her words viscerally. Queen Nia was the ruthless monster who orchestrated the death of forty-nine of his people.

 _War makes killers of us all_ , _that’s what Queen Nia used to say._

When he closes his eyes and sees a young, orphaned Echo, taken in by that queen, molded into a killer, of course, Echo wouldn’t see a monster in her protector, much like Octavia didn’t think he was one until recently.

“We need to open that bunker, for the girl’s sake,” sighs Bellamy.

What kind of role models will the little Louwoda Klironkru girl have if she grows up with only him and Echo as teachers? How much will they screw her up? She deserves better chances, deserves to play with other children, and learn from better teachers.

“I think she will be ok with you as her guardian.”


	18. 125 days a. P.

“Hey, _Strik Wusripa_!” calls Echo in trigedasleng as she limps out of the hut, carrying a large box of clothes. “ _Give me a hand, will you_?”

The little girl’s startling blue eyes flit from Echo to Bellamy.

She doesn’t shy away from them anymore, but she still prefers to stick by his side, eying the spy with suspicion. Bellamy is convinced that Echo’s tendency to call her _Strik Wusripa_ , little monster, doesn’t help.

Watching her trot diligently towards the Azgeda spy, he can’t help but smile. Yesterday she allowed him to untangle and braid her wild, dirty mane, and, in the new clothes, she looks less like some devilish forest elf and more like O when she was her age. 

He and Echo have decided they will dig the rover out of the desert ditch once her leg is healed, and then they will drive back to the bunker for supplies. With better equipment, they may be able to unearth the bunker, get the girl to safety.

The two of them come closer, setting the box on the dining table by the fire. Echo sits down with her leg propped up in a rickety stool, under the attentive scrutiny of the girl.

“I don’t think you should call her that,” comments Bellamy, stirring the pot. Echo has told him how to make stew, which is a slow and time-consuming affair, but supposedly very tasty.

“If she doesn’t want me to call her that, then she should say so herself.”

“ _Chit laik yu tagon_?” asks Bellamy. At the table, Echo fakes a shudder.

“What did trigedasleng ever do to you?”

“What I thought I did a pretty good job.”

“Yes, at butchering my beautiful language.”

“Madi,” says the girl. Both adults turn to her so quickly, she takes a little step back, but her chin is jutted out in defiance, and her mouth pulled into a decided line. “ _Ai laik Madi kom Louwoda Klironkru._ ”

Bellamy steps closer to her, going down to his knees to be at the same eye level. The words feel weird on his tongue, but he tries to enunciate them as clearly as possible, just like Lincoln did during his lessons: “Meika’s slak. Ai laik Bellamy kom Skaikru.”

Madi stares at him for another second and then stretches her hand out. Bellamy goes to shake it but remembers just in time that grounders clasp each other’s forearms. At the table, Echo chuckles, speaking in trig so quickly, he doesn’t understand anything other than her name and clan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading and commenting.


	19. 456 days a. P.

“ _I am not tired_.”

“ _And I don’t want to hear it. Go to bed, or you won’t come to Becca’s lab with us tomorrow.”_ Bellamy can’t keep the smile off his face as he watches Echo try to wrangle the excited Madi into bed.

They moved into one of the little houses a few months back, when two weeks of hail and snowstorms made it impossible to sleep outside. It is a small house: two rooms and a living room/kitchen right at the front. 

Bellamy leans against the door to Madi’s little room. The bed is on the opposite wall, covered in woven blankets and downy pillows.

“ _I want to hear a story,”_ says Madi in trig.

“ _Do I look like Bellamy_ , _Skrit Wusripa_?”

“ _Please, Echo_.”

The two grounders always speak in trigedasleng with each other. Over the past few months, Bellamy has grown so used to the sound, sometimes he forgets he is talking it too until he stumbles across a new word or a phrase he doesn’t understand. Echo grumbles under her breath, taking a seat on the side of the bed.

“ _Only one short story_ ,” she continues in trig with a sigh. Madi burrows deeper into her bed, nodding enthusiastically. “ _The tale goes like this: two princes were riding home for the Winter Festival. One came from the North, the other from the South. They each led a mule carrying the spoils of their hunt for, during the Winter Festival, the better hunter would be crowned King of the Living, decked up in furs, and don the antlers of the Forest Spirit._

_ Now, the older brother was handsome and kind, he was their father’s favorite and everyone dotted in him. The second one, clever and sly, was their mother’s favorite. He would cheat at cards and slip between the shadows, he would talk to snakes and feed the foxes and carry a black crow on his shoulder.  _

_ The older brother knew he would win, for everyone loved him, and he wouldn’t let them down. He also had better aim than his brother.”  _ Madi chuckles. _“Coming from the South, he caught large deer and heavy-boned boars, dangerous monkeys and black-coated panthers. All of these prices he had slain and loaded up on the back of his mule until the poor animal’s back was nearly bent._

_ The younger brother had gone North, where snow and wind blew and tore at his cloak. He searched for elusive prey and lost many arrows with little to show for his efforts. So he returned, humbled, just a handful of white rabbits hanging from the mule’s back. He could already hear the mocking voices of courtiers, the ridicule from the palace fool, see the disappointment in his father’s eye. _

_ That’s when he came upon a small hut. An old woman screeched in anger as she beat something furry that lay curled at her feet. Curious, the prince drew near. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. The woman sneered: ‘This thief tried to lick the cream out of the bowl I left for the Spirits. As is the King’s law, a thief shall be punished.’  _

_ The furry creature at her feet didn’t deny the accusation. It didn’t say a thing, because it was just a white fox. ‘That animal could hardly follow the King’s law, for as a fox, he isn’t bound by it.’ _

_ The woman would not see reason. ‘It is my right to uphold the King’s law. If the fox is lawless, then it shouldn’t have come to the King’s land.’  _

_ ‘Let me take it,’ said the young prince, ‘its fur will please my mother, and a happy Queen will please my father.’  _

_ The woman eyed the prince for the first time, and she spat on the ground at his feet. ‘The sly prince stands before me, trying to talk me out of my due. Always the dark protector of the fox.’ _

_ ‘I will pay for the creature. Take a rabbit from my mule, it’s worth more than the cream the fox stole.’  _

_ The woman wasn’t pleased, but she took the offered price and slammed the door shut. Slowly the fox uncurled, its big yellow eyes brimming with knowledge. He took the bowl of cream from beside the door and dipped its fingers in it, licking them clean.  _

_ ‘Well, that cost you more than me. I guess you will want something in return for your unrequested aid. What will it be, jewels, fame, power, or love?’ _

_ ‘How about your company, silver fox? I have a long way to go, and I could do with someone to talk to.’ _

_ ‘You know of me?’ _

_ ‘I am friends with your cousin, the red fox,  _ said the prince, _‘and with your feathery friends: the crow and the magpie.’_

_ The fox shrugged, decided he didn’t have anything better to do and walked alongside the prince’s steed. They walked a mile side by side, the fox licking the cream and the prince guiding horse and mule. At some point, when the fox had eaten his fill, he handed him the plate. ‘You have been fair to me, Friend of Foxes. And so, this plate is now yours, and it will forever be full to the brim.’  _

_ With those words, the fox left the second prince with his magical plate that would always be full, no matter how often he spilled it.  _

_ And so, the prince continued on with two rabbits and a golden plate tied to his mule.” _

Echo sighs, her voice ebbing away. She brushes Madi’s hair back with a soft smile on her lips, drawing a small spiral on the girl’s brow with her thumb before raising. When she notices Bellamy, standing by the door, she startles, color rising to her cheeks.

“I didn’t notice you there,” she says in English, and Bellamy is suddenly aware that this is the first time he’s heard his language in a week.

“I heard your tale and couldn’t walk away.”

“Well, at least I managed to entertain someone.”

“The whole point of a bed-time story is to fall asleep.”

She smiles, following him out of the room and into the one they share. Her bed is on the right side: covered in buttery furs and studded pillows. On her bedside table lies one of the books they recovered from Becca’s lab on their last supply-run, an ointment she uses for her hands and a small pouch containing her praying beads.

Bellamy’s bed stands against the left wall, neatly made, his belongings all stored in boxes under the mattress. On the wall hang three pictures Madi made over the last few months: a large tree beside a house, a bright green deer with twisted antlers, and an artistic rendition of him, Echo and Madi. 

“Was there a point to that story?”

“How do you mean?” sat on the edge of her bed, Echo unbraids her hair. She’s dressed only in her sleeping shirt, which leaves her long legs bare, the scars of the beartrap in direct contrast with the swirly tattoo decorating her left leg.

“A moral or something to be learned?”

“The prince meets a crow and a snake later on, and they grant him great princes for his services.”

“And I guess he wins the crown.”

“A good monarch knows how to provide for his people, even if it means he has to dismiss honor and rely on the services of the liars, and thieves.”

“Isn’t that morally questionable?”

“Morality,” says Echo, “is the tool of fools. The truth is everyone has their place, that is what keeps the balance of the world. Take out the fox, and the rabbits will destroy your crops, take out the wolf, and the foxes will grow lazy and dumb.”

“So, what you are trying to teach Madi is that it is ok to steal and lie?”

“If it gets the job done, why wouldn’t it be ok?”

“Liars can’t be trusted. Is that what you want her to become? A cheater and a liar who everyone distrusts?”

Echo narrows her eyes at him and stays quiet for a long time. “Everyone lies, Bellamy. The only thing we can teach her is to lie for the right reasons and to the right people.”

He shouldn’t be surprised. After all, Echo has been a spy since she was around Madi’s age, trained and molded into a ruthless liar, capable of betraying her friends for ‘the betterment of Azgeda.’ Still, hearing her speak those words sends shivers down his spine, reminding him he was the ‘right people’ once. She was his enemy, and her deception caused the death of forty-nine of his people.

Bellamy turns his head away, unable to look at her, anger and disappointment coil tight in his belly.

He had nearly forgotten about her betrayal. How could he forget?

“Good people don’t do that,” Bellamy growls.

He won’t let her change Madi, won’t let Echo turn the sweet little girl into some ruthless Azgeda spy, capable of cheating and killing whoever stands in her way. The cycle of violence ended with Primefaya, and Madi will never know what it feels like to take a human life, to be responsible for someone’s death, to be a pawn manipulated and used to advance war.

Echo’s voice cuts softly through the haze of memories and fear gnawing at his insides.

“Madi is the last true _natblida_ , Bellamy. She will become Commander one day, and a good leader lies and cheats and does everything in their power to protect their people.”

The worst part is, Bellamy shouldn’t be surprised. He knows Echo, knows she is loyal to a fault and pragmatic. He should have known she would see Madi as nothing more than a way of getting back into her clan’s good graces, grooming the girl to become Commander and then leveraging her position as Madi’s guardian to benefit her Kru.

Yet, discovering that she hasn’t changed hurts more than he expected. A part of Bellamy had hoped she would see him and Madi as her new clan, much like Bellamy sees Echo.

“Once a spy, always a spy.”

Across the room, the Azgeda woman flinches slightly, but she doesn’t deny it.

Madi is just a little girl; she shouldn’t have to worry about these things. She shouldn’t have to become a duplicitous, scheming creature, someone who expects the worst of people and lives with the paranoid fear of someone who is hunted.

But that’s all Echo knows, so it’s all she can teach.

_ As if you are any better _ , hisses the dark voice in the back of his mind. It is a gruesome, cruel voice that sometimes sounds like his mom and other times like Octavia. It’s the voice of Jaha, and Maya, and Indra and Pike and every other person he has killed. _What could you possibly teach Madi? You have already destroyed one innocent girl, what makes you think you won’t ruin her?_

Bellamy takes a shuddering breath in, pushing the voices down, but they only laugh and tighten their coils around his lungs. Across the room, Echo has turned her back on him.

_ You criticize her, but at least Echo is honest in her beliefs. What are you doing pretending you are any better? You are a killer, the same as her. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for reading and commenting


	20. 457 days a. P.

Bellamy wakes at the crack of dawn, feeling more tired than he was when he went to bed yesterday.

Staring at the gray ceiling, the details of the nightmares that have hunted him all night long slip between his fingers, leaving only a choking sense of despair. He wants to crawl over to Echo's side of the room, wants for her to embrace him, and let him rest for a few minutes, tell him everything is going to be ok. Or, at least, that is something he could have. What he truly wants is to talk to his sister, or Raven, or Clarke or Kane. He wants his mom.

Bellamy shoves his blankets away and sits up.

Across the room, Echo is stock still, curled into a tiny ball with her back to the wall and a hand under her pillow where she keeps her hunting knife. Always ready to defend herself.

"I know you are awake," he says, and her eyes snap open, finding him in a second. Her shoulders remain relaxed.

"How did you know?"

"I don't need you to train me to be like you," snaps Bellamy in lieu of an answer. "You can just go out and start your morning routine or whatever, you know."

She uncurls slowly, gracefully, all slender limbs and long lines. She has regained her figure in the time since they arrived at Louwoda Kliron. Other than her shorter hair – it hasn't grown to its original length yet – and the faint scars littering her skin, she looks just like she did the first time he saw her. Or, more accurately, the first time he saw her in Polis as the commander of Azgeda's army: proud and fierce and powerful beyond belief.

"Duly noted," she drawls and something in Bellamy's chest twitches. His lips threaten to pull up into a smile, but he keeps it at bay. They need to address yesterday's conversation. Madi will not be a Commander, and they shouldn't groom her to become one.

"You are in a bad mood."

"Why would you think that? I just discovered you are using a child to gain political advantage for the clan that kicked you out." Echo purses her lips but says nothing, and her silence feels like sandpaper grating against his skin. "Not that I should be surprised; you've always been very _mission-oriented_. But I really thought you cared for her."

Echo stares at him. For a moment, she looks like she wants to argue, defend herself. She inclines her head and marches out of the room without a word. Only when the door has closed behind her, does Bellamy notice how badly he wanted her to deny it.

"Hey! I am talking to you!"

Echo is in the kitchen, when he storms in, spoiling for a fight, hands shaking with righteous anger.

"What do you want me to say?" asks the grounder, always levelheaded, always calm and calculating, standing by the chopping block, already laden with fruit for their breakfast. "Yes, I plan ahead. And yes, I am preparing her for the time when she becomes Heda. There, are you happy?"

"She is never going to become Heda."

The spy rolls her eyes. "Even if we do everything right. Even if we survive these next four years and give Madi the childhood she deserves, what happens when we open the bunker, and the people find out she is a true _natblida_?"

"They won't. We can hide the truth. We can tell them we made her in a lab. Like you, like me."

"We are in over our heads," Echo's words feel like a slap. "We are no Fleimkipas, we don't know what she needs to learn, or how to make her ascend and what rites to perform to hear the voices of the previous Commanders. So yes, I will teach her how to use the means at her disposal, how to hide daggers on her at all times, how to defend herself, and be ruthless and smart."

"We are not corrupting her like that. We will find another solution."

"You aren't listening to me, Bellamy!"

"No!" he snaps, grabbing her arms. "Madi is the only good thing that's left on this earth, and we are not going to twist and turn her into another monster."

"Hedas die, Bellamy," Echo's voice is a shiver down his spine. "With the aid of Felimkipas and armies, their enemies are too many and too powerful, and they always die, and I am terrified." Her caramel eyes are shiny with unshed tears, and Bellamy knows she is a good actress; she has fooled him more than once and will probably do it again. But, right now, in this moment, he believes her, and he wants nothing but to make that fear go away.

"We will find another way."

Echo looks at him with pity and puts a hand on his shoulder.

"Until then, we teach her to survive."

They eat their breakfast in silence, both Bellamy and Echo staring at, what he hopes is an unsuspecting, Madi. Doubts tear at the back of his mind. What if Echo is right? What if someone finds out that Madi is a _true natblida_ and decides to stick the AI in her head? It is their job to protect and prepare her for the future, even if it's not what he wants for her.

Hell, Bellamy never thought his sister would become a fierce warrior, queen of the grounders. _I am not a leader; it should be you or Clarke._ O said in that last radio call before the world ended. Bellamy should have prepared her better, and now the universe is giving him a second chance, a chance to make things better. To prepare Madi for the worst and protect her, so that she doesn't have to face it.

He cleans the plates while Madi and Echo load the rover.

They've made three supply runs to Becca's bunker over the past few months, slowly ferrying books and tools and materials that might be useful in their efforts to dig the bunker out. Madi loves riding on the rover across the desert, climbing to the hatch, and sitting on the roof with her feet dangling over their heads. 

This little excursion, though, will be slightly different.

For the first time since Praimfaya, they will be visiting Arkadia. And this will be the first time they drive north to Troit, Azgeda's capital. Troit is an 8-hour drive from Arkadia, which means the trip will take two or three days longer than usual.

"Alright," says Echo, from where she's bent over the map they've drawn. Madi, perched on a stool, looks intently at the lines. "We will go first to Arkadia, then northwest, to Troit, see? Once there, all the way down to Becca's lab."

"And from there, to Polis," continues Madi, tracing the lines with her little finger, "and back home."

The pride in Echo's smile sends warmth down to Bellamy's belly.

"Very good, _Skrit Wusripa_."

Madi preens at the compliment.

"Are we ready to go?" asks Bellamy, his throat feels tight.

"Yes."

They pile into the rover, Bellamy behind the wheel and Echo as shotgun. At the back, Madi entertains herself with her favorite ragdoll.

The rover growls pleasantly as it climbs out of the valley and rolls through the dusty expanse of the desert.

Bellamy still can't wrap his head around the fact that this is what most of the world must look like now. Gone are the forests and the meadows and the bright colors that robbed his breath when he first arrived on Earth. For most of his life, he has been surrounded by gray, the hum of machinery and the washed-out blue clothes his mom made. And then, for an instant, for a heartbeat, he was thrust into a world so vibrant his mind had difficulty processing it. Lush and alive and vibrant, he felt truly free for the first time in his life. Earth wasn't contained, it wasn't asphyxiating with its walls and the constant threat of a mechanical malfunction. It was dangerous in a way that gave him agency: there were beasts and enemies in the shadows, but he could fight them. There is no fighting the cold of space.

Praimfaya has taken that freedom away. It has destroyed the infinity of Earth, turning that vastness into a small terrarium. There aren't walls, but the certainty of starvation and heatstrokes are enough to keep them put.

Next to him, Echo is entirely still, her face impassible, which is Echo for 'I hate everything about this.'

Considering this was her world for a lot longer than it was his, it is not surprising.

"You sure you want to go to Troit?"

Bellamy has only been to Azgeda territory once, and it was a horrible experience that practically condemned most of his people to death. But, whenever she talks about Troit, with its vibrant marketplace and the communal bathhouses, the lively theaters, and effervescent taverns, there is so much love in her voice, he forgets that she's talking about his former enemies.

"I can't imagine it," whispers the spy, quietly so that Madi doesn't hear. "I can't picture what it must look like now. I need to see it for myself."

He understands. It is the same reason why they are driving towards Arkadia.

What will it look like after Praimfaya? What will have survived? What if they arrive and there is nothing left, just another bleak expanse of sand and ashes? Or, what if it survived and it is nothing but a ghost town?

Bellamy can't tell which scenario would be worse.

So many lives were lost in the process of building the Ark's settlement on Earth, and for what? That suffering feels so pointless now.

 _Praimfaya doesn't care which clan you're from_ , he told Echo. Back then, he hadn't been aware of how exact those words actually were. Azgeda, Trikru, Spacekru, all of them burned in the end. Humanity is only alive because O was strong enough to love more than one people. Bellamy doesn't think he would have been capable of doing the same thing, had he been in her shoes. O and Kane are the only reason why he fought to open the door.

Out of the corner of his eye, he watches Echo and feels impossibly grateful that she's there. 

" _Great Spirit beyond,"_ whispers the spy when they reach Arkadia.

Bellamy stops the rover. This… this can't be it.

Alpha station raises to the sky, crooked and burnt, charred metal litters the ground. There are no traces of the huts, or the greenhouses Monty helped build. The wall is gone and, with it, the hum of electricity, the screeching of playing children, the murmur of voices.

He steps out of the vehicle in a trance.

The place where they built the stables is now a dusty pile of ash. Octavia loved the stables; she loved brushing the manes of the three horses that lived there, loved tending to them, and riding Elios across the forest. A single barrel is all that is left of the open-air bar next to the hulking shadow of Alpha station. He sat here with Gina. They drank moonshine and watched their people running around. Gina kissed him here and told him everything would be better.

Bellamy remembers that day like it was yesterday. It was a few weeks after Mount Weather, he had a terrible day, and she was kind and patient and took him out to watch the stars.

This is where Raven's gate should have been. A hidden pathway he took more often than he ever admitted, to flee into the forest. The delinquents' little secret.

The door into Alpha has fallen off its hinges; the corridor into the metal structure is pitch-black. Still, he has walked these halls so often, he doesn't need to see to know where O's old room was. Where the mess is. Gina worked at the bar, always a smile on her soft face, always kind and funny and patient.

Bellamy stops, his hand on the door to one of the small bedrooms. Jasper's bedroom. Goofy Jasper Jordan, whom he ruined until only a shell of that bright boy remained. He tried to make the delinquents into an army and only succeeded in destroying them.

 _We won't_. Jasper's last words feel like a knife twisted in his chest.

Bellamy swore he would protect the Delinquents, vowed to give them freedom and a place to call home and instead got them killed.

When he opens the door, his small flashlight shies away from the metal shapes of a desk and the skeleton of a bed. The bones of what little Jasper had look back at him and Bellamy can't think through the haze of guilt and sorrow. He wants to run away but is rooted to the spot.

He takes an unsteady step forward, traces the lines of the desk with his fingers.

 _I am trying to help you_ , the boy said. _We are on borrowed time_.

Monty will never forgive Bellamy for letting Jasper behind. But he remembers the young boy in those last few weeks before Praimfaya. The promise of death, the promise of his pain being finite, was the only thing that brought that goofy, happy part of him out. Jasper wasn't made to be a fighter, and Bellamy should have protected him better.

His fingers bump against a metal box. The latch is half-melted, but he manages to pry it open. The googles hit him like a train, his knees buckle under him, and he finds himself on the floor, the contents of the box tipped onto his lap: the googles, Maya's music-player, a letter addressed to Monty.

He can't breathe, can't move, can't think.

"Bellamy?"

Echo's slender hand lands on his shoulder, jolting a sob out of him. It takes him a long time to notice her arms wrapped around his shoulders, the hand cradling the back of his head, the slow beat of Echo's heart against his ear.

"It's alright," whispers the grounder into his hair. "Let it all out, it's alright. You are safe."

Bellamy's whole body shudders with his sobs, the heart-wrenching pain the only thing he is perfectly aware of.

When he finally manages to get his sorrow under control, Echo's shirt is soaked, and he feels wrung dry. His head pounds. She puts the googles, the letter, and the music-player back into the metal box, slipping it into her bag.

"Do you want to keep going?" she asks, her voice soft.

Bellamy shakes his head no. "I don't…"

The idea of walking into the mess hall or O's room makes bile rise to the back of his throat. He doesn't want to see the place where so many young Arkadians decided to take their own life in one last hallucinogenic-filled party. He doesn't want to see the place where Jasper took his final breath, where Bree, Riley, Hayes, and the rest of the delinquents died. Where Harper and Monty nearly died. He doesn't want to see the room O shared with Lincoln, doesn't want to walk the halls he strode as Kane's lieutenant, the place he made a hell for his friends when he changed his allegiance to Pike.

"Do you want to leave?"

He wants to turn his back to these ruins and never return, which is ridiculous. There are probably a lot of resources they could scavenge here, it would be stupid to leave them behind.

Echo guides him to the rover, loading him into the passenger seat and calling to Madi.

 _This is ridiculous_ , says a small voice in the back of his head; _you came here to tell Madi about your people. To show her where you lived._

The rover growls when Echo turns the key and drives out of the charred ruins.

Bellamy closes his eyes to try and keep himself from crying again, feeling utterly ridiculous and stupid.

"What's wrong?" asks Madi, a hint of panic in her voice. Bellamy turns his head towards the window, biting his knuckles to keep himself from making a sound. Echo's hand squeezes his leg. "Are you hurt?"

"Don't worry, _Skrit Wusripa_. Everything will be alright."

Bellamy is barely aware of a shuffling sound, and suddenly Madi is climbing onto his lap and wrapping her thin arms around his chest. He hugs her tightly, burying his head into her braided hair, breathing her in.

She smells of forest and berries, of clean laundry and the loose dirt of their small garden. She smells like home and safety, chasing away the stench of ash. With his head still resting in her hair, he blinks his eyes open.

A single tear hangs in Echo's eyelashes, but she offers him a small smile and squeezes his knee again, her hand a warm tether keeping his mind inside the rover, away from the blood-thirsty memories and the sharp claws of his guilt. Safe, surrounded by his little family. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading and commenting


	21. 458 days a. P.

Echo stops the rover. They are at the bottom of a ravine, towering mountains rising on both sides of the road ahead, which curves elegantly and vanishes to the right. It is a very defendable position, the perfect place for an ambush. The site looks so similar to the kill box near Arkadia; he half expects to see Clarke stepping around the rocks.

Which is, of course, ridiculous, because Clarke is not here. Clarke is gone, somewhere up in the sky.

_There is nobody here._

"Troit stands behind the next turn," says Echo, her voice dull.

"Do you want me to drive?"

She shakes her head, no. The spy is stock-still; her white-knuckled hands clenched on the steering wheel, the only outward sign of tension.

The rover doesn't move.

"Troit is impenetrable. It has never been conquered. The river never ran dry. The Reapers never hunted here; Azgeda was safe behind its walls. Not even the Mountain dared touch it."

_Praimfaya doesn't give a damn about what clan you're from._

"Hey, whatever we find behind that mountain, you are not alone."

"These are not mountains." Echo turns her head to stare at him with wide, terrified eyes. "This is the riverbed." 

Bellamy shivers.

"We can go back, come another day. We don't need to do this today."

Echo swallows, licks her lips, sets her jaw.

"No. I-I need-" She's breathing hard. "It can't be worse than what I imagine, right?"

 _It can. It probably is,_ Bellamy should say. Instead, he squeezes her hand.

She puts the rover into gear, and they inch closer to the bend. The spy guides the vehicle until it stands next to a narrow stone staircase. The city over their heads is still hidden from view, and Bellamy wonders if Echo is trying to postpone seeing her former home as much as possible.

Madi is the first out, flying up the stairs: all tense, barely contained energy after the long drive. Echo takes her time, strapping her sword to her side and slinging her bow and arrows over her shoulder. She takes the steps one at a time, her hands fisted at her sides, face unreadable. For the first time in months, she looks like the scary Azgeda warrior he confronted so many times before Praimfaya. Cool, composed, deadly.

The stair ends on what must have been a wide riverside promenade lined with small stalls and squat buildings. Now the walk is covered in two inches of sand and ash, and the buildings are crumbling. The blackened metal bones of skyscrapers look like the bony claws of a monster reaching up to the sky.

Madi skips forward, picking up discarded bits and pieces to examine them and either drop or shove them into her backpack.

Echo moves like a ghost, her steps barely leave any footprints on the ash as she leads them slowly into the city proper.

Streets are littered with concrete slabs and glass shards, melted into sleek carpets that cover the cracked asphalt.

The spy stops, perched on top of a small mountain of rubble. She unearths a twisted metal sign, staring down at it with haunted eyes.

 _What is it?_ Bellamy wants to ask. If this is some sort of landmark, he can't tell. Everything looks gray and brown and black and kind of the same.

"Echo?" His voice sounds unseemingly loud in the whispering silence of the ghost town.

"It's gone," she whispers. "It's really gone…"

"Echo…"

"The library!"

The grounder takes off at a run, climbing quickly over fallen debris. Madi cocks her head, following, slower.

As he makes his way behind the two women, Bellamy notices small details of the civilization that lived here. Mementos spared from the flames: a blackened tavern with its bar intact, an upturned cart, a sign hanging from a squeaky chain, filling the air with a terrible whining sound, sot covered wood and singed cloth, blackened bones.

Echo guides them towards a large, crumbling structure. She enters through a small side door and stops dead in her tracks. The stones are scuffed, and the fire left behind the shadows of pens. Small pieces of leather, blackened wood, and a choking stench are all that remains of the palace's stables.

The grounder walks towards the back.

"This is where Roan's favorite horse slept, Graunsheika" she says in a reverent whisper. "Such a smart and loyal mare. She brought him back, once, during the River Wars with Delphikru. The battle had been a mess, but Graunsheika wasn't spooked. And, when Roan was wounded, unconscious, and bleeding like a pig during the slaughter, she found her way back home. Saved his life." She swallows. "After Queen Nia died and he became Haihefa, I had her brought to Polis."

"Where was yours?" Bellamy asks.

"I didn't have a horse of my own."

She clears her throat, turns around and vanishes through a darkened archway. It leads to a spiral staircase that climbs up to a narrow corridor. From there, Bellamy follows Echo through kitchens and sitting rooms and rooms with caved-in roofs and empty rooms, past dusty shadows, and frayed remains of tapestries, bones, and furniture, through doors that crumble at her touch. Light streams in through glassless windows that overlook the city. The air is stuffy with silence, their footsteps eerie loud.

Watching the spy march purposefully through these corridors, Bellamy can imagine them in their former glory. Echo has painted the image of the Summer Palace so often, it isn't difficult to picture walls covered in paintings and tapestries, courtiers in leather and furs sitting around, eating grapes from beautifully crafted bowls, their scars highlighted in the flickering candlelight. And Echo, proud and powerful, in the middle of it all, no need to hide in the shadows or spy; a respected member of the court by her queen's side.

She charges through another archway and stops so suddenly; Bellamy nearly runs into her.

" _It is gone_." Her voice is sickeningly flat. Over her shoulder, Bellamy sees a vast room, empty but for a massive desk standing in front of a floor-to-ceiling window.

" _It is all gone,"_ she says in trig.

"Echo?" She doesn't react. "Echo, speak to me, please."

"Azgeda's pride," she says, her voice still flat, "the legacy of our Kings and scholars. Gone. Lost." She wanders deeper into the room, moving like a ghost. "Azgeda truly has fallen."

Her long, slender hands trace the top of the desk, pulls on the handles of the drawers, sliding them open one after the other. A horn, a folded banner, a small coin, and a scroll is all that survived the fire.

"20,000 people lived in this city: artisans, painters, merchants, scholars... Azgeda was proud and rich. Our people created the trigedasleng grammar, we wrote and translated the books that came before Praimfaya. Two hundred people lived within the walls of this fortress. And this is all that remains of them: a battle horn, the King's Banner, and a worthless spy."

"Hey!"

Echo doesn't cry. Her face is contorted into a terrible grimace, but her eyes remain dry when she looks up at him. "Azgeda was a great nation, and now it's gone! Everything it stood for, everything it accomplished, everything that was worth saving is gone! HOW AM I STILL HERE!?"

Bellamy walks around the desk, grabbing her bony shoulders. She is tense as a bowstring; instead of sorrow, the caramel depths of her eyes hold a terrifying wrath.

Bellamy grabs her by the shoulders, forcing her to look at him.

"You are worth saving, Echo."

She growls, trying to shrug him off.

"I am a failed spy who betrayed you and betrayed her King. And all for what? Roan is dead, radiation claimed our people and Praimfaya destroyed our legacy."

"You are the strongest person I know."

She twists out of his grasp, shoves him back.

"Then, you know very few people." She takes the scroll and walks out of the room, her back stiff, her shoulders thrown back.

***

The palace is a mess of corridors and rooms. Bellamy searches for Echo, but he has no clue where she might be hiding, or if she's still even here. Maybe she left, maybe she went back to the rover.

Still, he checks every room, because, if there is a chance that she is still here, he wants to find her. Wants to make sure she understands just how important she really is for him and for Madi.

Yes, she betrayed him, and the memory of it still stings. But she is also the one who can keep Madi safe; she is the one who knows how to thrive in Louwoda Kliron; she is the one who can tell Madi about her heritage and her history. Yesterday, when he thought he was going to die, she was there, keeping him together. He wants to be by her side now that she needs him.

Bellamy reaches the end of yet another bleak hall. Through a side door, he finds a narrow staircase.

The staircase leads to a long, windowless hall flanked by doors, all of them with a small metal plaque screwed to one side—each plate marked with an array of black dots. Near the end, one of the doors is slightly ajar. It is a small, windowless bedroom containing a chest of drawers, a narrow cot, and a stool doubling as a bedside table. Considering the rest of the city, this seems to be the best-preserved room in all of Troit.

Echo sits on the furs covering the wooden bench that is the bed, her hunting knife in her hands, and eyes downcast.

"Echo?"

The spy still isn't crying.

She just sits there, turning the hunting knife in her hands over and over and over. The blade catches the light of the candles flickering on top of the dresser and reflects a white line across her throat.

Bellamy's mouth runs dry, his heart twists painfully in his chest.

"Echo, are you ok?"

"This was my room," she says, staring through him. "The room I was given after my first mission. Queen Nia was very pleased. She didn't have much faith in me, but I proved that I deserved to live. That I could be what she needed me to be."

Bellamy licks his lips and takes a step into the room. When he kneels down, his knees bump against hers. Echo doesn't seem to notice. He wraps his fingers around hers to stop the turning of the blade.

"Queen Nia would've killed me, had she caught me cheating on the Conclave. She would have been the one to send me out to thin the competition, too."

"What is done is done."

Echo doesn't hear him. "I should have known better. Roan was always so proud, so righteous. I should have known he wouldn't approve. I should have known how to please him. But he had been gone for years, and I forgot, and I disgraced Azgeda."

They don't do this. They don't talk about the Conclave or Mount Weather. What does she expect him to say? That it was ok? That she did the right thing by her people? He doesn't believe that, and she isn't stupid enough to accept his words. Bellamy can't even wrap his head around what she is really sorry about: that she got caught? That she didn't know what Roan would've wanted or that she got banished?

Bellamy has done many shameful things in his life, he regrets many choices. But those are his failings, and he never really considered how they reflect on his people.

 _I disgraced Azgeda_. He doesn't understand that concept, mainly because it doesn't show remorse for the lives taken, but for how Echo's actions hurt her people, how they make the sum total of Azgeda feel.

Echo's eyes fall on his hand, still wrapped around hers.

"This world doesn't make sense anymore."

"Someday, it will."

Echo takes a shuddering breath in and pulls her hands away. The room is too small, with both of them there, but she sidesteps him gracefully.

"We should go," she says.

"If you want to stay a little while longer…"

"The only thing that I'll find here are memories."

"This was your home," argues Bellamy, "if you need to mourn, we have nothing but time."

" _A spy cannot be burdened by memories of the past_ ," says Echo in tirg. " _Like a snake, a spy sheds the past and continues on, for the glory of Queen and Kru."_

***

That night they make camp a few miles from the ruins of Troit. Madi sleeps in the back of the rover while Echo and Bellamy curl up in the sands of the riverbank. The spy hasn't said a word since leaving the palace, and now, laid beside him, she is completely still, her breathing shallow.

"You know you can talk to me, right?" whispers Bellamy, turning to look at her. In the starlight, her hair looks silvery, and the sharp lines of her cheekbones and nose seem softer. 

"There is a dam inside of me. It's cracked, but it hasn't started to leak yet. When it breaks, it will drown me." Her eyes flutter open, and she pins him down with a terrified stare. "But, I can fight it until your people come back for you and Madi."

"You are my people, Echo."

"Ah, Bellamy. I am a broken thing," she closes her eyes again. "You deserve so much better."

"You aren't a thing, and if you break, I will be right here to help you put the pieces back together."

Echo smiles, her voice a barely-there whisper: "Your words are too kind."


	22. 466 days a. P.

“Is Echo going to die?” 

Bellamy frowns at Madi, standing uneasy beside the fire. Echo is loading the last of their supplies into the rover for their journey back to Louwoda Kliron.

Over the past few days, they have built a makeshift support system to prevent further collapses on top of the bunker door and have managed to clear about two inches of debris. Both he and the spy are tired and depressed, speaking very little and putting up a front only for Madi’s sake. Apparently, not as successfully as they hoped.

“What makes you say that?”

The seven-year-old shrugs, her eyes flit towards Echo and back.

“She is quieter than normal, and she doesn’t sleep.”

Bellamy sighs, and sits down.

“Well, Troit was Echo’s home before Praimfaya, just like Arkadia was mine, and seeing it destroyed like that… It hurts a lot.”

“Why doesn’t she cry like you did?”

“Everyone hurts differently. Echo, she doesn’t want to cry, because she thinks that is weakness.”

“Do you think that crying is weakness?” asks Madi with a deep frown.

“No. I think that sometimes you need to cry, just like sometimes you need to laugh until your belly hurts. Echo… Echo isn’t like that; she likes to fight her demons in silence.”

The girl mulls the words over for a few seconds. “But we can help. I hugged you when you were sad, and then you weren’t sad anymore. Maybe if we hugged her really hard, she’d stop being so sad.”

Bellamy brushes Madi’s dark hair back, chest warm with how much he loves the little girl.

“It is worth a shot.”

“You don’t think it will work?” Madi purses her lips. 

“I think she needs time. What we need to make sure she knows how much we love her.”

Madi nods dutifully. “When we get home, I will bring her favorite flowers.”

“I am sure that will make her smile.”

Bellamy watches the girl go with a heavy heart.

Madi shouldn’t need to worry about them. It’s his and Echo’s job to worry, to protect her, to file the harsh edges of pain and sorrow away so that she can enjoy a happy childhood. But Madi is a bright girl, smart and observant, and they are not doing a good enough job.

The stew gurgles happily as he puts out the fire and sets the pot on the floor. Echo and Madi sit beside him and eat their food directly from the steaming bowl. The spy chews slowly, her eyes gliding over the ruins like she expects some enemy to jump at them from the shadows. After dinner, Madi stretches on her back between them, under the starry sky.

“Can you see the Ring from here?”

Bellamy’s eyes travel over the dark dome, searching. He wants to point at the brightest of stars and say: _yes, that one is my home. It’s looking over us, protecting us._ But it’s a lie. That’s the North Star, and it’s nothing but a ball of unfeeling fire burning miles and miles away. _If_ the Ring is alight up there _if_ his people managed to get up there in time, they have no clue that he’s still alive, that Madi exists, they are blissfully oblivious, taking these five years to heal from all the pain they’ve gone through.

 _‘All the pain you put them through_ ,’ hisses the voice of the monster in his ear.

Ever since he saw Arkadia’s ruins, the creature has been twisting like an oily snake on the edges of his vision, whispering truths and wrapping around his lungs in ever-tightening coils.

“It’s that one,” says Echo, pointing at a twinkling dot in the sky. “It blinks like that, because it’s tired, preparing to go to bed.”

Madi cocks her head, squinting up at the sky. “And the six heroes are up there?”

“It looks smaller than it is,” says Bellamy. “Up there, Monty is probably perfecting his algae farm, and Raven must be up to her eyebrows in stuff to repair. And Clarke is keeping a tight hold over the whole operation.”

Bellamy’s heart aches.

He wishes he was up there with his friends, wishes he could see the gray halls of his childhood, talk to people that understand what it is to hate, and love the Ark with equal measure. Wishes he could be helpful and hug Clarke and joke with Monty and play errand-boy for Raven. He would train with Harper, and even Murphy and Emori would find their place in such a small group.

“I bet Wanheda is bored up there with no battles to fight.”

He shudders.

 _No matter what I do, someone always dies_ , said Clarke, not twelve hours after pointing her gun at him. She was trying to save 400 Skaikru, 400 people he had sworn to protect and to serve and to fight for, 400 people he willingly let die in exchange for Octavia and Kane.

“Clarke is not a killer,” he growls, his voice harsher than intended. “She was training to be a doctor.”

 _I am going to help you_ , she said to Atom when Bellamy failed to do the right thing when he saved himself and forgot to make sure Atom was safe from the acid fog. If Clarke were the commander of death, she would have saved Atom. Instead, she was forced to mercy-kill him.

‘ _You forced her to kill him because you were too afraid to do it.’_

Bellamy remembers Clarke’s hands, so impossibly soft and white. If he had been braver, if he had been stronger, it would have been his hands covered in Atom’s blood, not hers.

“She was our doctor when we first got to the ground.” Madi shifts under her blanket, getting comfortable, her eyes are nearly black in the quiet darkness of the Polis night. “She was our healer,” he says, turning his face to stare at the sky, searching the Ring. Have they seen the tiny speck of green that is Louwoda Kliron? “Born of Skaikru royalty, she was the daughter of our High Healer, and Head of Engineering, she would follow in the steps of her mother. Or would have, but she was put into prison before she could finish her training.”

“Why?”

“She found out that the Ark was dying.”

Bellamy keeps his voice low as he tells Madi about the oxygen crisis, how the hundred arrived on the ground, how Clarke led an exploration team to retrieve provisions, and how Jasper was caught. He stumbles over the googled boy’s name. There is so much he would change if he had the chance to go back, so many regrets and mistakes and pain he wishes he could take away.

What would have happened if he had seen how hated Murphy was? If he had kept the boy on a shorter leash, if he hadn’t antagonized Clarke or taken Raven’s radio or tricked impressionable teens into taking the wristbands off. Would any of it have made a difference in the end, when Praimfaya took 400 people? Would he have opened the bunker if his delinquents had been inside?

“That way lies madness,” whispers Echo, startling him. Between them, Madi has fallen asleep. The grounder lies on her side, her back towards them. “What is done is done. Look forward and keep walking.”

“What happens when you can’t walk anymore, and the monsters catch up with you?”

“You either kill them or you die.”

“Easy as that?”

Echo rolls to her feet, silent as a ghost. Bellamy watches her go for a moment before following.

They walk in silence, through what’s left of the winding streets. “Roan loved Polis. He liked how busy it was, how many accents there were floating around.” They climb down a small slope. A few dry trunks rise towards the stars like gnarled fingers, the only sign that there ever was a forest here. “This is where he would stand to watch the initiates train. He wasn’t allowed, but he was young and brash and Nia’s second son, so Fleimkipas usually pretended he wasn’t there.”

“I didn’t know Roan had siblings.”

“Most of them died before he became king. They are all dead now.”

Silence hums between them. A few feet away is what looks like a stone altar: a gray slab crudely carved. “I laid his bones to rest here.” She chuckles, and it’s a dark and unsettling sound. “Killed by his childhood sweetheart. I bet Nia loves it.”

“Luna and Roan were a thing?”

She looks over her shoulder. “Who do you think helped her flee Polis?” She tips her head back, eyes closed. “She would have been a good Heda, a better Heda than Lexa was, at least to Azgeda. Commanders aren’t supposed to have families, but they often have favorites. And with Roan as Luna’s favorite, Nia would’ve reaped the benefits, and it only would’ve cost her one son.”

“So, what happened?”

“Luna killed her brother and broke. She wanted to die. Roan begged me to help. Nia wasn’t pleased. The Coalition was a bad arrangement for Azgeda since we were the biggest kru. Nia sent me to make her displeasure known and, as a result, lost her heir and was forced to banish Roan.”

She speaks matter-of-factly, a soldier’s report. He finds it unnerving: Echo loved Roan. She loved him enough to come back after being banished to find his body and take it to a place that held significance for him. Sick from radiation and without any reason to do so, she buried Roan by herself.

Seconds tick by, Echo doesn’t elaborate.

Bellamy rolls his tongue over his teeth. He has the creeping suspicion he won’t like this. Still, he has to know.

“How did Nia make her displeasure known?”

The spy looks tired. “You don’t want to know.”

“Actually, I do.”

“If I tell you, you will never look at me the same, Bellamy kom Skaikru.”

The words send chills down his spine. ‘ _Leave it alone,’_ whispers a voice in the back of his mind.

Wind whistles through the dry trunks.

“One thousand, five hundred and thirty-eight, that’s how many people I’ve killed in the nine months I’ve been on this planet. Seven hundred and fifty-eight of them were my own people.” He swallows the lump of ashen shame, trying to wrestle his thoughts away from the dark pit of voices screaming in the back of his head.

Echo fixes him with the chilly, unblinking stare she uses when she wants to intimidate him. “I hunted down and captured Lexa’s favorite, tortured every last secret out of her, cut her into pieces, and sent them to the Commander.” 

The dry tone in her voice makes his stomach turn. ‘ _It’s not true,’_ protests the voice in the back of his head. ‘ _It can’t be.’_ Because he knows Echo: she tucks Madi in at night and teaches her about grounder spirits and history, she straightens her coat and shows her how to track down prey. How can the same person that hugged him so fiercely when he cried do something so… so…?

 _‘Said the mass-murderer_ ,’ snarks the dark monster with the voice of his mom. ‘ _Who are you to judge her, killer?’_

“Do you regret it?”

“What is done is done. What use do I have for regret?”

The silence stretches like a chasm between them.

Bellamy mulls the words over. _If I tell you, you will never look at me the same._

She must feel some sort of regret, or she wouldn’t care, no?

“I regret few things in my life. Costia is not one of them.” Bellamy doesn’t know how to answer, and Echo sighs, plopping down on the ground. She waits until he sits beside her. When he does, her shoulders relax, and her lips soften, as if she was afraid, he would leave and is glad he didn’t. “If I hadn’t helped Roan, Luna would’ve probably lost the conclave on purpose. No-fault of mine or Roan’s would’ve meant no punishment for either of us. Still, the treaty could have been unfavorable for Azgeda, and Nia could still have wished something done about it. Or, maybe the Queen would have been less angry and less keen on hurting Heda, and Costia would have lived a few years more. Nia’s heir would have still been alive, and Roan wouldn’t have been forced into exile. Or maybe it was meant to happen, and something else would have driven the princes to their fate. My regret has no impact on anything.”

Bellamy watches the shadows on the stone altar.

“Is that how you really feel?”

Echo doesn’t answer for a long time. Then, she leans her head on his shoulder.

“Costia had a younger sister in a village near Delfikru’s capital. Felix chanced upon a small fortune while hunting, enough to secure her a house and corn for the harshest winters. Last I know of her, she had taken a husband of her own.”

“Did you-?”

“There is only one thing I have done that I didn’t think I could live with. Other than that, I have done what is best for Azgeda.”

 _You always did what you had to do to protect your sister. That’s who you are_ , said Clarke, her piercing blue eyes pinning him down like a bug. She is the first person who _saw him_. Bellamy remembers that moment like it was yesterday: the thrill and the panic and awe that someone as bright and smart and powerful would look at him and know him. He would have done anything for her.

 _The good little knight by his queen’s side_.

Sitting in the quiet darkness, surrounded by nothing but ruins, Bellamy comes to the baffling conclusion that he and Echo are not so different. Two soldiers hopelessly devoted to their people, capable of doing terrible things for those lucky enough to command their love.

“My sister fell in love with a grounder, and I kidnapped and tortured him. He was kind to me, and I got him killed.”

“A Trikru warrior?”

“Lincoln kom Trikru. He made Octavia happier than I had ever seen her. He was a friend, and I got him killed.”

“He’s the one who taught you trig?”

“Yes.”

Echo hums. “Yeah, that explains the accent.”

Bellamy frowns, Echo’s head is a welcome weight on his shoulder; he’s playing with a loose thread on her leggings near her knee. He should stop.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Trikru has a very unrefined accent. They bark their words like angry dogs, biting them off in a very unrefined manner.”

Something bubbles inside his chest, exploding into a surprised chuckle that echoes in the darkness. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches the fleeting smile that crosses the spy’s expression.

“How is that the one thing you decide to take away from everything I’ve told you?”

“It’s a horrid accent,” she deadpans.

Bellamy laughs. He isn’t happy, but the dense, dark mood has lifted somewhat, and the starlight seems to shine brighter now, casting the world in silver that looks cozy instead of eerie. He rests his head on top of Echo’s for a moment, impossibly grateful for her presence, for her stupid joke and her bluntness, for not turning her back on him even as he reveals his shame.

“You have time to teach me how to talk proper trig,” he snarks.

“It’s something your friend gave you; I wouldn’t dare take it away. Besides,” she pauses to lick her lips and adds in a rush: “I like your ugly Trikru accent.”

Bellamy closes his eyes, a smile playing on the corners of his mouth.

“He also taught me how to fight.”

“That I will change. You are a pitiful fighter.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading and commenting.


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